Afghan refugee outflow continues from Hazara

Some 3,600 families have returned to Afghanistan amid suspicion of coercion

HARIPUR: Having spent over two decades in Pakistan, around 3,600 Afghan families living in the Hazara division have now returned to their homes in Afghanistan in just the past two months.

While they have not been directly asked to uproot their lives by the authorities, there is a strong hint of social coercion which seems to have precipitated a sudden surge in departures.

“Although it is very difficult to leave Pakistan, where we lived and earned our living for over two and half decades, developed brotherly relations with host families [leaving for the homeland is the only option],” Din Muhammad, an elder of an Afghan family hailing from the Baghlan province told The Express Tribune.



His sentiments were echoed by Hakim Khan, another Afghan refugee in Mansehra who ekes out a living as a hair dresser. While he denied he was leaving Pakistan under pressure from the local police or camp authorities, he noted that ever since the December 16, 2014, attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, government policy towards Afghan refugees had changed.

As the police carried out operations against illegal immigrants, he claimed that legal refugees were harassed as well. While Islamabad has repeatedly pushed back a deadline for them to return since 2009, there are growing fears that the latest cutoff date set for March 2017 would be final.

Refugees worried about their future in Pakistan amid a security crackdown against undocumented foreigners combined with a UN decision to double its cash grant for voluntary returnees from $200 to $400 per individual in June, and a fast approaching winter has seen a surge in voluntary repatriations.



There are over 22,012 registered Afghan families with 126,336 individuals in Haripur. The Panian and Padhana Afghan camps house over 100,000 Afghan nationals. Of these 1,941 families live in the Panian camp-I, 5,341 in Panian camp-II and 6,906 families in Panian camp 3. In Mansehra, officials say around 2,190 families are living in Khaki refugee camp, while 2,503 families are living in the Ichriyan camp.

Around 2,100 Afghans have returned from Haripur while 1,500 have returned from Mansehra in the past two months. They are a fraction of the 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees which the UNHCR says Pakistan hosts.

Business owners reluctant

From Mansehra and Haripur, every day at least eight to 10 families leave for a war-torn homeland. However, most of those leaving are daily wage earners, farmhands and sanitary workers. Business owners, however, are reluctant to uproot their investments.

“We are going to apply for visa as the government of Pakistan has approved the policy of issuing visas to businessmen,” said Nadir Khan, who runs an automobile dealership in Haripur.

No forced repatriation

Officials in and around the refugee camps in Mansehra and Haripur are quite jumpy about any mention of refugees being forced to return to Afghanistan.

“We are not forcing them to leave the country that hosted them for over three decades,” states Nawaz Khan, in charge of security at camps in Haripur. While conceding that the K-P government had launched a crackdown against illegal Afghans staying in the area, he told The Express Tribune the crackdown was not for registered refugees.



Instead, he said they had set up repatriation facilitation centres in the camps while the local police too were facilitating Afghans.

Another official conceded that some of the Afghan refugee camps in Mansehra and Haripur fell in areas earmarked for China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) routes. “It is true Ichriyan and Brairi camps fall under the CPEC route but the Afghan occupants are not being forced and their repatriation is purely voluntary,” claimed Tanvir Shah, another camp in charge in Mansehra.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2016.