Star Metro - Kabul slams Pakistan's 'violence' against Afghans pressured to leave

Islamabad announced at the start of March that 800,000 Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC) would be cancelled -- the second phase of a deportation programme which has already expelled around 800,000 undocumented Afghans.

"The mistreatment of them (Afghans) by neighbouring countries is unacceptable and intolerable," the Taliban Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation said on X, calling for a joint agreement to facilitate repatriations.

An average of 4,000 Afghans crossed the border from Pakistan on Sunday and Monday, "far higher than the March daily average of just 77", the International Organization for Migration (IOM) told AFP.

The new phase in Pakistan's campaign to repatriate Afghans "could affect up to 1.6 million undocumented Afghan migrants and Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) holders during 2025", the agency said.

The United Nations says nearly three million Afghans live in Pakistan: 800,000 had their Pakistani ACC residency cards cancelled in April and 1.3 million still have residence permits until June 30 because they are registered with the UN refugees agency UNHCR. Others have no papers.

"It is with great regret that Afghan refugees are being subjected to violence," the Taliban refugees ministry said.

"All refugees should be allowed to take their wealth, belongings and household goods with them to their own country," it added.

"No one should use refugees as tools for their political goals."

Afghans who crossed the border in recent days told AFP that they left without being able to take all their belongings or money, while others were rounded up and taken directly to the border.

"My only crime is that I'm Afghan," Shah Mahmood, who was born in northern Afghanistan, told AFP on Monday after crossing the Torkham border point.

"I had papers and they ripped them up."

Human rights activists have for months been reporting harassment and extortion by Pakistani security forces against Afghans.

Moniza Kakar, a lawyer in Pakistan's largest city Karachi, said that officials "are picking and arresting people randomly, from different places".

"There is no proper mechanism to shift the whole family," she told AFP.

Relations between Kabul and Islamabad have soured since the Taliban takeover, fuelled by a sharp rise in violence in Pakistan along the Afghan border.

Pakistan's interior ministry said it had issued "strict instructions" for the facilitation of Afghans' exits, including "that no one should be harassed in this process".

In September 2023, hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans poured across the border into Afghanistan in the days leading up to a deadline to leave, after weeks of police raids.

D.Fraser--SMC