Our Afghan refugee population dilemma

While Pakistan’s tangled relationship with Afghanistan can be assessed at various levels, one major implication of this entanglement has resulted in us hosting one of the largest and most protracted refugee populations in the world.

The plight of millions of people who have languished in exile for years in neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan has remained a major humanitarian challenge for both these resource constraint countries, which has not received the level of international support the issue deserved. In the case of Pakistan at least, the government announced new repatriation plans last year, and it has been stepping up pressure to send Afghans back. Besides the economic burden of hosting this refugee population, the fact that Afghan-Indian relations keep strengthening, while those between Afghanistan and Pakistan have long been clouded by mutual accusations of cross border movements of militant extremists does not help matters much.

With no sign that the Taliban insurgency will ease up, and the Afghan military also battling other insurgent groups, notably IS, record numbers of Afghans were internally displaced by conflict in 2016. Meanwhile, Iran continues to push Afghans back home, Europe is likely to return more, and Pakistan says it will begin forced deportations of all Afghans who have not left the country by March.

Estimates concerning the number of Afghan refugees in Pakistan vary. According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), Pakistan has some 1.5 million registered refugees, while another million are estimated to be unregistered. Last year, the Prime Minister extended the deadline for Afghan refugees to legally reside in Pakistan till March 2017.

The large number of unregistered refugees has to do with Pakistan’s decision to stop registering further refugees, or the inability of refugees to get their cards renewed. Undocumented refugees are ineligible for cash grants from the UNHCR, are more vulnerable to abuse by state authorities, and are under even more pressure to leave.

The UNHCR has been giving $400 to refugees willing to repatriate, but the agency itself has come under criticism for compelling refugees to return. Conversely, many refugees have reported being unable to register with the UNHCR due to incomplete paperwork, or expired refugee cards, making them ineligible for the UNHCR’s help to return.

Pakistan has issued deadlines before, and then extended them. But the sheer number of Afghans who have left over the past few months, coupled with the political rhetoric and reports of intimidation, imply that this time the resolve is more serious.

A Human Rights Watch report recently highlighted Pakistan’s failure to meet its international legal obligation to protect its Afghan refugee population from harassment, at least half of whom are children. The alleged increasing use of coercive pressure from local governments, including the police, especially in the K-P, to expel Afghan refugees cannot be condoned. Dawn, for instance, has recently cited major recent crime statistics from K-P, which indicate that contrary to the widespread notion, Afghans constitute just over one per cent of those found to have been involved in offences deemed heinous. The discrepancy between this finding and the oft-quoted figures about Afghan refugees’ involvement in offences, which have been said to range from 15 per cent to 30 per cent of the total crimes taking place in the province.

However, blaming Pakistan alone for its hardheartedness towards the plight of the Afghan refugees would be unfair. Pakistan’s exhaustion with its enormous and longstanding refugee burden is understandable. There is also no doubt about the lacklustre and sporadic support provided by the international community to deal with this refugee crisis. The Afghanistan government must also realise that Pakistan is doing it a huge favour and be a bit more gracious, especially since the high numbers of returnees is posing a major challenge for the government, which will further complicate its chances of socio-economic stabilisation.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 27^th, 2017.

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