Refugees Are Pushed to Exits in Pakistan - nytimes

TORKHAM, Afghanistan — First, the Afghan families’ homes were raided by Pakistani policemen wielding sticks. Then the men were hauled off to jail, released only after relatives paid bribes.

When they had nothing left to pay, they said, they were told to leavePakistan forever and return to Afghanistan — officially their native country, but a land foreign to many Afghan refugees after generations of flight across the border.

Such experiences have become increasingly common for Afghans living in Pakistan after the terrorist attack on a school in Peshawar in December. Though the attack was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan refugees say it fueled a new wave of resentment against them. Since then, almost a thousand Afghans a day have been streaming through the border crossing at Torkham, many saying they were forced out, others worried enough to pick up and leave.

It is not clear if the pressure on Afghans to leave Pakistan is the result of a widespread policy, or if local officials are taking advantage of the situation to expel unwanted refugees, as many Afghans suspect. But the numbers have clearly been growing. Afghan officials who screen traffic at Torkham report that more than 33,000 undocumented Afghans returned from Pakistan in the first six weeks of 2015 — more than for all of 2014.

Clinging to the backs of trucks, some of the Afghans tried to put on brave faces.

“It’s an honor to come back to my country,” said Wazir Khan, 32, as he and his family lingered in a long line of colorful cargo vehicles awaiting inspection before entering Afghanistan.

Mr. Khan was born in Pakistan, and the only lifeline he had to his Afghan homeland was scrawled in blue ink on his left palm: the phone number of an in-law he was supposed to call once he crossed the border. Still, he insisted, “It’s a joyful moment.”

The United Nations says that there are nearly 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and there are many more hundreds of thousands of unregistered Afghans living in the country. The Pakistani authorities have long said that they would like the Afghans to return home, concerned that their presence on Pakistani soil undermines security.

But some of those who say that they have been driven out in the past two months are registered refugees. Salim, 35, who like many Afghans goes by one name, said that when he showed his refugee card to the police who raided his home in the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan, an officer threw it on the ground. “They kept telling us that they have orders to expel all Afghan refugees,” he said.

If true, that would violate international covenants, and the United Nations’ refugee agency has complained to Pakistan about such episodes after the Peshawar attack. Some rights groups, like Human Rights Watch, have called on Pakistan to halt the apparent expulsions.

“We have got news of registered Afghan refugees being rounded up during police crackdowns after the Peshawar attack and have conveyed our concerns to government counterparts in Islamabad,” a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Babar Baloch, wrote in an email. He added that his agency “was quick in conveying our reservations on the roundups as soon as it began, right after the Peshawar school attack.”  Read More at NYT

Refugees Are Pushed to Exits in Pakistan

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