Islamabad rejects long-term visas for Afghan refugees

Says move would be ‘against national interest’.

ISLAMABAD:

The government rejected on Saturday a ministry proposal to grant 150,000 Afghan refugees visa permits for a long-term stay in the country, an official requesting anonymity said.

The proposal was shot down with a strongly worded note of disagreement and displeasure, with the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) describing the proposal as ‘’against national interest,” the official added.

According to him, the proposal was designed without taking security agencies, the ministry of foreign affairs or the provincial government into confidence.

Minister for SAFRON Engineer Shaukatullah Khan told The Express Tribune that the proposal was the brainchild of his predecessor Najamuddin Khan.  “It was not my proposal at all,” he added.

Shaukatullah said that Afghan refugees who were recommended for the visa permit numbered at 100,000. “There are very slim chances for those 100,000 Afghan refugees to get the visa permits.”

However, in February, he had told the media that the number of refugees up for the permit was 150,000. Businessmen, students, skilled workers and widows are among the Afghan refugees, some of whom have lived in Pakistan for 30 years.

The minister added that other proposals were being finalised that are to be implemented after the visa plan approval.  “We have been working with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees on the proposal for quite some time,” Shaukatuallah added.

According to an official estimate, 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees and over 1 million illegal Afghan refugees live in different parts of Pakistan without documentation.

The foreign ministry has already vehemently opposed a similar proposal by Western countries, advocating permanent settlement of Afghan refugees and illegal Afghans in the country.

Pakistani officials from the foreign ministry also advised leaders to share the financial burden that Islamabad had to bear for the past 30 years as a result of hosting thousands of Afghan refugees, a senior official requesting anonymity in the foreign ministry told The Express Tribune.    

The governments of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Sindh and Punjab have long requested the federal government to repatriate all the Afghan refugees as early as possible.

The most affected provinces, in the terms of security issues due to the presence of thousands of illegal Afghan nationals who label themselves refugees, are Sindh and K-P.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th, 2012.