From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Pakistan Orders More Than a Million Afghans Out of the Country   
   By Zia ur-Rehman and Christina Goldbaum, Oct. 8, 2023, NY Times   
   Hundreds of police officers flooded into a Karachi slum around midnight,   
   surrounding the homes of Afghan migrants and pounding at their doors. Under   
   the harsh glare of floodlights, the police told women to stand to one side of   
   their homes and demanded    
   the men present immigration papers proving they were living in Pakistan   
   legally. Those without documents were lined up in the street, some shaking   
   with fear for what was to come: Detention in a Pakistani prison and   
   deportation to Taliban-controlled    
   Afghanistan.   
      
   The police raid on Friday in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, followed an   
   abrupt decision by the Pakistani authorities last week to deport the more than   
   one million Afghan migrants living illegally in the country.   
      
   “Police entered every house without warning,” said Abdul Bashar, an Afghan   
   migrant whose two cousins were among the 51 people who the police said were   
   arrested during the neighborhood sweep. “The fear has left us restless,   
   making it difficult for    
   us to sleep peacefully at night.”   
      
   On Tuesday, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry announced that migrants residing   
   illegally in the country had 28 days to leave voluntarily, and it offered a   
   “reward” for information leading to their arrests once that deadline   
   passed.   
      
   Though Pakistani officials say the crackdown applies to all foreign citizens,   
   the policy is largely believed to be targeting Afghans, who make up the vast   
   majority of migrants in Pakistan.   
      
   While Afghans have faced harassment in Pakistan for decades, this announcement   
   was the government’s most far-reaching and explicit action affecting Afghan   
   migrants. It was widely seen as a sign of the increasing hostility between the   
   Pakistani    
   government and the Taliban authorities in neighboring Afghanistan as they   
   clash over extremist groups operating across their borders.   
      
   Over the past year, Pakistan has experienced a surge in terrorist attacks,   
   both by militant groups that have found haven in Afghanistan under the Taliban   
   administration and by others whose fighters have been pushed into Pakistan   
   following a brutal    
   Taliban-led crackdown on their ranks. Some former Taliban fighters have also   
   migrated to Pakistan to wage jihad against the Pakistani government.   
      
   For months, the Pakistani authorities have pleaded with the Taliban to rein in   
   extremist violence stemming from Afghan soil. But Taliban officials have   
   rebuffed those calls, instead offering to mediate talks between the Pakistani   
   authorities and the    
   militants.   
      
   The growing animosity between the two countries has threatened to further   
   destabilize a region that is already a political tinderbox.   
      
   On one side of the contested border, the Taliban administration in Afghanistan   
   is armed with a vast arsenal of American-made weapons left during the U.S.   
   withdrawal and feels encouraged by its victory over a global superpower. Many   
   within the Taliban    
   have also harbored resentment toward Pakistan for decades.   
      
   On the other is nuclear-armed Pakistan, which has struggled with military   
   coups, volatile politics and waves of sectarian violence since its founding 75   
   years ago.   
      
   Caught in between are the roughly 1.7 million Afghans living in Pakistan   
   illegally, according to Pakistani officials. Among them are around 600,000   
   people — including journalists, activists and former policemen, soldiers and   
   former officials with the    
   toppled U.S.-backed government — who fled after the Taliban seized power,   
   according to United Nations estimates.   
      
   Many of those migrants face a stark choice: Either return to Afghanistan,   
   where they fear persecution by the Taliban, or remain in Pakistan and face   
   harassment from the Pakistani authorities.   
      
   “We have been left in the lurch,” said Mahmood Kochai, an Afghan   
   journalist who fled to Pakistan with his wife and six children after the   
   Taliban seized power.   
      
   Like many Afghan migrants in the capital, Islamabad, Mr. Kochai arrived in   
   Pakistan on a temporary visa, anticipating an asylum decision from Western   
   embassies in Islamabad. Soon after arriving, he applied for sanctuary in the   
   United States under a    
   refugee program for Afghans who worked with the U.S. government or U.S.-funded   
   organizations.   
      
   But since he applied more than a year ago, he has not heard anything back, Mr.   
   Kochai said. Now, he is concerned about the expiration of their Pakistani   
   visas in two months.   
      
   In Karachi, home to a sizable population of Afghan migrants, news of   
   migrants’ getting arrested at security checkpoints on roads and in markets   
   during routine outings has stoked panic.   
      
   Ali, a former Afghan security official who would give only his first name   
   because of his immigrant status in Pakistan, said he and his neighbors —   
   also Afghan migrants — had barely gone outside for two weeks, fearing   
   getting arrested and being sent    
   back to Afghanistan. If he is deported, he worries he faces arrest — or   
   worse — because of his affiliation with the U.S.-backed government.   
      
   The new policy has in fact drawn criticism from human rights groups, which say   
   deporting Afghans could put them at risk in Afghanistan. Despite the   
   Taliban’s policy of blanket amnesty for Afghans who worked with the   
   U.S.-backed government, human rights    
   monitors have documented hundreds of abuses against former government   
   officials since the Taliban seized power.   
      
   Pakistani officials have defended the policy as necessary to protect Pakistan   
   from extremist violence. In a news conference on Tuesday, the Pakistani   
   caretaker government’s interior minister, Sarfraz Bugti, asserted that   
   Afghans were involved in 14 of    
   the 24 major terrorist attacks in Pakistan this year.   
      
   “There are attacks on us from Afghanistan, and Afghan nationals are involved   
   in those attacks,” he said. Taliban officials denied those claims.   
      
   The aggressive approach echoes similar crackdowns on Afghan migrants in years   
   past, observers say. After a string of major terrorist attacks in 2016, the   
   Pakistani authorities began a sweeping campaign to uproot Afghan migrants,   
   forcing around 600,000    
   back to Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch characterized Pakistan’s actions as   
   the world’s “largest unlawful mass forced return of refugees” in recent   
   times.   
      
      
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