Afghan refugees suffer 'like prisoners' during Pakistan's crackdown

The space in which refugee Shaharzad has to live has been reduced to the small courtyard of a guest house in the Pakistani capital, reminiscent of her life under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

She fears she will be swept up in a wave of anti-Afghan sentiment, including reports of harassment, extortion and arrests by Pakistani authorities who have cracked down mainly on undocumented families living there.

“For Afghans, the situation here is terrible and the behavior of the Pakistani police resembles that of the Taliban,” said Shaharzad, who lives in constant fear of being deported with her children.

Her son was recently arrested while walking in a park when “the police asked him for money instead of documents,” she said.

The government cited a surge in militant attacks claimed by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, for a campaign last summer that expelled some 750,000 mostly undocumented Afghans.

However, in recent months, Islamabad and the police have also begun to allege Afghan involvement in opposition unrest following the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

– 'Scapegoats' –

Afghans waiting to be resettled in Western countries say they are caught in political tensions.

“After we arrived here, we feel like we are out of the frying pan and into the fire,” said Afghan Mustafa, who is waiting with his family for his visa to the United States.

The 31-year-old said his family could not go out freely to buy groceries and medicine for fear of being arrested.

“If they know you are Afghan, whether you have a visa or not, they will arrest you or extort you,” he said.

More than three years after the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul, the United States and European countries have yet to reopen their embassies there, forcing Afghans to fulfill their requests from Pakistan.

Shaharzad was invited to visit Pakistan by a European country which said it would process her visa from the capital Islamabad.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry in July called on Western countries to accelerate the relocation of more than 44,000 Afghans living in Pakistan and awaiting resettlement to the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany and Great Britain. -Brittany.

Millions of Afghans have traveled to Pakistan over the past four decades, fleeing successive conflicts including the Soviet invasion, a civil war and the US-led occupation after 9/11.

Some 600,000 Afghans have fled to Pakistan since the Taliban government regained power in August 2021 and implemented its austere version of Islamic law.

According to the UNHCR, Pakistan currently hosts some 1.5 million Afghan refugees and asylum seekers, alongside more than 1.5 million Afghans of different legal statuses.

A campaign to deport undocumented Afghans was launched as political ties between neighboring governments weakened and Pakistan's economic and security problems worsened.

A wave of political protests in the capital in support of jailed former Prime Minister Khan last month led to a new surge of around 30 arrests of Afghans, officials said.

Khan's heartland lies in the ethnic Pashtun belt of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which shares close cultural and linguistic ties with the Afghan Pashtuns.

Muhammad Khan, an Afghan community leader in Islamabad, said the protests were being used as a cover to intimidate Afghans.

Contrary to the official version, he claimed that nearly 200 Afghans had been arrested over several days, notably during raids on guest houses.

“Afghan refugees are the sacrificial lambs for Pakistan's internal problems and tensions between the Islamabad and Kabul governments,” Khan said, denying the involvement of Afghans in Pakistani political activities.

Pakistan's Interior Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

– “Free license” to extort –

Imaan Mazari, a human rights lawyer who defends arrested Afghans in Islamabad courts, said the protests have led to an increase in “racial profiling (of Afghans) in Islamabad and Rawalpindi,” just south of the capital.

The police obtained “totally free authorization to arrest whoever they want, extort from them (and) exploit them”.

Provincial Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur, who has led the recent protests, said hostility toward Afghans had spread to Pakistani Pashtuns.

In a letter to Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, he accused police of “arbitrary raids” of “Pashtun workers in Islamabad” and warned that “such actions risk fostering a sense of alienation and exclusion among communities”.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said it was “deeply concerned about the alleged ethnic profiling of ordinary Pashtun citizens” and called on the Islamabad police to refrain from any action “that creates divisions between different communities living in the country.

The Afghan embassy in Islamabad has denied any involvement of Afghans in political activities in Pakistan.

“This policy (of blaming the Afghans) brings no benefit to Pakistan and will only deepen mistrust between the two neighboring countries,” he said in a statement.

For Afghans in limbo while waiting to be relocated, life has become similar to the one they left behind in Afghanistan.

“We have become like prisoners, we go out very rarely and only when it is really necessary,” Mustafa said.

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