Pakistan wants to expel all Afghan refugees: Embassy

ISLAMABAD

Pakistan wants to remove all Afghan refugees from the country and they face expulsion in the near future, the Afghan embassy in Islamabad warned on Wednesday.

The embassy issued a strongly worded statement about Pakistan’s plans, saying Afghan nationals in the capital, Islamabad, and the nearby garrison city of Rawalpindi have been subjected to arrests, searches, and orders from the police to leave the twin cities and relocate to other parts of Pakistan.

“This process of detaining Afghans, which began without any formal announcement, has not been officially communicated to the Embassy of Afghanistan in Islamabad through any formal correspondence,” it said.

“Ultimately, officials from Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that there is a definitive and final plan to deport all Afghan refugees not only from Islamabad and Rawalpindi but also from the entire country in the near future,” the embassy said.

The latest development follows Pakistan’s threat to deport Afghans living in the country illegally.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif approved a deadline of March 31 to deport those awaiting relocation to third countries unless their cases are swiftly processed by the governments who have agreed to take them.

The Afghan embassy criticized "the short timeframe" given and "the unilateral nature of Pakistan’s decision”.

Besides the hundreds of thousands living illegally in Pakistan, some 1.45 million Afghans are registered with the UNHCR as refugees.