Pakistan orders Afghan asylum seekers out of country by November

A school for Armenian fugitives in Karachi, PakistanEPA

All unauthorized Armenian asylum seekers, or an estimated 1.7 million people, are to be expelled from Pakistan by November, according to a government order.

Tensions have risen as a result of an increase in violent assaults along the border between the two nations this year.

Pakistan has accused Afghan-based workers of border crossing episodes, a charge refuted by the Taliban government.

However, it has fueled animosity in Islamabad, which on Tuesday declared an end to” illegal” immigrants.

At least 50 people were killed in a shrine explosion last week in Mastung area, which is close to the Afghan border. The mosque was the scene of the spiritual celebration.

When Sarfraz Bugti, the interior minister of Pakistan, announced the assault get on” illegal” Afghans on Tuesday, he did not appear to make any direct mention of that or another assault in Balochistan province.

Foreign law protects the right to request asylum abroad. Since the Taliban took back control of Afghanistan in 2021, Pakistan has taken in hundreds of thousands of Afghan immigrants.

According to the UN, approximately 1.3 million Afghans are listed as refugees, and an additional 880, 000 have been granted the right to be.

However, Minister Bugti asserted on Tuesday that an additional 1.7 million people are in the nation” illegally ,” presumably referring to those who have not yet been granted refugee status.

By the end of the month, he said, either deliberately or through a forced transportation, those folks would have to leave the country.

According to state media reports,” if they don’t go, all the provincial or federal law enforcement agencies will be used to conduct them.” He didn’t go into more detail about how such an activity would go about.

Additionally, he declared a committee tasked with finding and seizing the personal property and possessions of” illegal” Afghans in the nation.

Afghan leaders in Pakistan responded by stating that local officials had already started rounding up Afghans, both those with and without legal position to be.

More than 1,000 Afghans have been detained over the past two days, according to X’s ambassador in a speech on the platform, which was formerly known as Twitter.

Armed fighters from the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan( TTP ), the Pakistani Taliban, and the Islamic State group have frequently attacked Balochistan province, which is close to Pakistan’s border.

At least 11 people were hurt in an explosion in the same neighborhood earlier this month, including a well-known Arab leader.

Islamabad later wanted all Afghans in the country to keep, including those with legal status and Pakistan home accounts, according to local state channel APP. For its record, it cited federal resources.

Since January, there have been 24 suicide bombing along Pakistan’s borders, more than half of which, according to Minister Bugti, were caused by extremists operating out of Afghanistan.

On November 1, he announced stricter regulations on Afghans entering Pakistan, stating that only guests with visas and passports may be permitted entry.

Afghans typically use their national identification card game as a traveling record when entering Pakistan at land borders. Afghans have a sizable backlog of applications for documents to provide Pakistan, and getting visas and passports has taken decades.