More than 200,000 Afghan refugees have already been expelled from Pakistan as part of the country’s fight against illegal immigration, the Pakistani Interior Ministry stated on Saturday.
“So far, more than 200,000 Afghan refugees have been repatriated,” Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti told German news agency DPA.
Also according to the official, the process is taking place without problems at all the border posts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, the two provinces bordering Afghanistan.
In recent weeks, more than 160,000 refugees have crossed the border from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the northwest of the country, and more than 50,000 have left Pakistan from Balochistan in the southwest.
According to official data, around 4.4 million Afghan refugees live in Pakistan, of which 1.7 million do not have valid documents.
About a month ago, the Pakistani government gave an ultimatum to all illegal immigrants to leave the country by October 31, an order that particularly affected Afghan citizens and was criticized by Western governments and international human rights groups.
The expulsion campaign accelerated on November 1, once the deadline to leave voluntarily and avoid deportation had expired.
Pakistan then ordered the expulsion, following months of tensions with Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders over cross-border attacks that Islamabad blamed on Islamic militants operating from the Afghan side.
Source: TSF
