On the evening of November 7, 53-year-old Jahantab was serving guests when her neighbor’s son burst into the room, screaming and panting. The police were searching houses, she was told, for undocumented refugees. Several police vehicles and two mini-buses had parked a few streets from their home in a distinct neighborhood in Pakistan’s Quetta city. A worried Jahantab, originally from Afghanistan’s Ghazni province and living in Quetta without documents, abruptly called her son cautioning him not to return home until the police were gone. It took a couple of hours for the police to leave, with the mini-buses filled with unregistered refugees.
Jahantab and her family are not alone in going through the anxiety and fear that have plagued refugees at the risk of being expelled from Pakistan any day. More than 1.7 million undocumented refugees from Afghanistan fear what could be the largest mass deportation of refugees in recent times, following a short deadline for “voluntary” repatriation that expired on November 1. In addition, there are currently over 1 million registered Afghan refugees and 880,000 more under other types of legal status living in Pakistan, according to the UN.
Since November 1, law enforcement agencies have been carrying out arbitrary raids in residential areas all over the country to detain and forcibly deport refugees. The campaign is mired with intimidation, harassment, and humiliation. Hundreds of homes have been bulldozed, in many cases official documents confiscated or slashed, and refugees’ private properties and vehicles seized. Now, many like Jahantab feel scared and traumatized.
Read more:
| KabulNow’s Special Report: Life in Limbo
| Pakistan Expels Thousands of Refugees Ahead of November Deadline
| Pakistan Detains Thousands of Refugees from Afghanistan in New Crackdown
| Pakistani Activists Challenge Mass Refugee Deportation
“I haven’t properly slept for the last week, worried about the uncertainty when my family will be deported,” she told me in a somber voice. “I am terrified by the looming possibility of a police raid which has occurred even at midnight. Once the clock ticks 8 in the evening, I ask my children to avoid venturing outside, fearing that they might be caught by police.”
Jahantab and her three children—19-year-old son Ali and teenage daughters Fawzia and Fatima—fled to Quetta months after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.
The family sustains their livelihood on the remittances sent by their sole breadwinner Mirza, Jahantab’s husband, who works as a laborer in Iran, and Jahantab’s brother in Australia who occasionally supports them financially. They live in a rented house in a neighborhood largely populated by ethnic Hazaras who have long been subjected to persecution, discrimination, and violence in Afghanistan. Just this past weekend, an explosion targeting a public transportation bus in western Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barchi area killed at least seven Hazara civilians—the third attack on the community in less than a month.
“I thought we would be safe in Quetta after we moved here. That I and my sisters would learn English and computer courses,” Ali, a fresh high school graduate, told me. “But the Pakistani authorities have decided to kick us out now. Where can we go?”
Before Ali could continue, Fawzia, who took pride in topping her English class last week, impatiently interrupted: “What about girls like me and Fatima? We won’t be able to attend school in Kabul [where they lived before moving to Quetta]. We won’t be able to freely go outside, meet our friends in a café, or work if we need to.” Fawzia, who misses hitting the gym regularly because of fears of being detained, added, “And we cannot go to the beauty parlor, too.” Both girls swiftly chuckled, looking at their mom.
Jahantab’s family is living in a precarious situation now, and Pakistan’s “long” and “gradual” crackdown has added to their fear and anxiety. Ali has restricted his mobility outside, visiting nearby markets for groceries and other necessities only when required. Fawzia and Fatima have missed their classes recently, skipping whenever they heard news about raids or police patrolling roads and streets. Jahantab’s husband in Iran keeps worrying about the fate of his family in Pakistan. “We have no intention to return to Kabul because our lives were shattered after the Taliban overtook control,” Jahantab said,
Although similar crackdowns have happened in the past, the recent policy of forced deportation is unprecedented in its speed and scale. Since November 1, Pakistani authorities have been deporting refugees from Afghanistan in alarming numbers, despite concerns from human rights organizations that they could potentially face persecution, abuse, torture, and other ill-treatment upon their return. According to the UN Office for the Coordination Affairs, between November 1 and 4 alone, more than 20,000 refugees crossed the Chaman and Torkham borders into Afghanistan—60% of them children. Pakistani officials said nearly 200,000 refugees returned to Afghanistan in the past two months ahead of the deadline. Despite Pakistan’s assurances to only target unregistered refugees, law enforcement agencies have intimidated, detained, and in many cases deported people with legal documents against their will, including those with Proof of Registration (PoR) card, which allows legal stay in the country.
A few kilometers from Jahantab’s home lives 62-year-old Azizi with his wife Jamila and son Zakir. They have lived in Pakistan for nearly a decade. Jamila holds a Proof or Registration card, but Azizi, who had spent most of his life in Iran as a construction worker, does not possess any document. Neither does Zakir, who occasionally traveled to Iran to work with his father. Due to the staggering level of inflation and as the Rial currency plummeted in Iran, the father and son decided to open a grocery shop in Quetta with their little savings. They, too, fear forced deportation to Afghanistan.
“Where would I go in Afghanistan?” Azizi, whose wrinkled face behind a patchy dark beard tells of a life of hardship, asked, shaking his head, “No, there is no dignified life there. People are struck by poverty and hunger. And there is no protection for Hazaras [his community]. The Taliban not only discriminate against our people but are also involved in their slaughter.” Before he continued, he showed me images of the recent victims of the explosion in western Kabul, largely populated by Hazaras. “See, this is the situation there, sadly.”
Pakistan’s arbitrary decision to expel refugees has also impacted the sense of association in the broader Hazara community of Quetta, fueling the mistrust and stigma that come with deportation. Azizi recalls a family who were forced out of their rented home after the landlord said law enforcement agencies would retaliate against anyone who provided housing to undocumented refugees. A video on social media showed a man filming his sparse home furniture and supplies under heavy rain, wailing that the property owner had thrown his belongings out. “We are one community, but Pakistan’s draconian policy has created an environment of fear and mistrust that is breaking us apart. Some landlords choose heartlessness over compassion, fearful of punishment or arrest from police,” Azizi told me, adding, “Where would such poor families go without shelter, food, and other essentials as winter approaches? The situation was not like this before.”
In another Hazara neighborhood, a property dealer, Alimi, told me how a family was separated as a result of a police raid a few days ago without a chance to appeal for protection or other support. He said that the police raided their home one evening, taking away the man. His wife and seven children were left behind. The woman has been ill-informed about the whereabouts of her husband despite looking for him everywhere, including the city’s two police stations. “His family does not know if he has been taken to the temporary detention center, deported back to Afghanistan, or who knows,” Alimi indicated. “Even if the family is ultimately reunited, the trauma of their forced family separation will remain.”
There are thousands of refugees like Jahantab and Azizi whose stories are unheard. Tens of thousands remain stranded in Pakistan’s detention centers or at the border crossings with limited access to shelter, food, hygiene, and other basic needs. There are reports of families separated on their way or at the crossings. In a heart-wrenching moment captured by Pakistani television, a young boy breaks down in tears as he hears his father talking about the harrowing experience of deportation. Another video showed an Afghan refugee, born and raised in Pakistan, speaking about his worries about being sent to Afghanistan, a country he has never seen before and does not speak the language. Another video captured the moment Afghan students hugged their Pakistani classmates as they bid farewells.
The Taliban, who has called Pakistan’s decision “unacceptable”, have appeared neither prepared nor capable of providing basic services or effective reintegration services for a massive number of returnees. More than two years of their rule have shown that the group, which remains illegitimate and isolated, is less concerned about the well-being of people than about the survival of its regime with no accountability and transparency. The country’s severe humanitarian and economic crises have only been deepened by consecutive years of drought, disasters such as the Herat quakes, and the inflow of mass returnees from Iran which will further strain resources amid donor fatigue.
