Chaotic conditions and an impending humanitarian catastrophe: tens of thousands of Afghan refugees are traveling across the Pakistani border to their home country.
Fearing an impending mass deportation from Pakistan, more and more Afghan refugees are crowding the border crossings into Afghanistan. The main access roads were busy on Thursday with trucks transporting families and their belongings to the crossings.
At the northwestern Torkham border crossing on the Khyber Pass on the road between Peshawar in Pakistan and Jalalabad in Afghanistan, thousands of people leaving the country continued to crowd on Thursday after Pakistan, as announced on Wednesday, began bringing foreigners without valid papers to assembly camps for expulsion from November. The radical Islamic Taliban ruling Afghanistan said that transit camps had been set up to deal with the sudden influx. But aid organizations reported catastrophic and chaotic conditions.
The background to this is the expiry of a deadline set by the Pakistani government a month ago, by which all immigrants without residency rights must leave Pakistan. This particularly affects Afghan refugees. According to the government, around four million Afghan refugees live in Pakistan, around 1.7 million of them without permission. After the Taliban came to power in 2021 alone, around 600,000 Afghans fled to the neighboring country. However, many Afghans have been living in Pakistan since the conflicts in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s; some have never been to Afghanistan.
Up to 10,000 refugees per day
According to Pakistani authorities, 128,000 Afghans have already left the Torkham border crossing since the expulsion order was issued. There were more than 24,000 on Wednesday alone. More crossed the border at Chaman in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province. Pakistani authorities have denied media access to the Torkham border crossing since Tuesday.
Aid agencies estimated that the number of people arriving in Torkham has increased from 300 per day to 9,000 to 10,000 per day since Pakistan’s announcement. The situation for people is becoming more and more dramatic. Aid teams on the Afghan side reported chaotic and desperate scenes among those returned, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Danish Refugee Council and the International Rescue Committee said in a joint statement. The federal government also expressed concern about the development on Wednesday because the already difficult humanitarian situation in Afghanistan would worsen with the onset of winter.
The Pakistani government rejected criticism of the measure from the United Nations, Western countries and human rights groups. According to the government in Islamabad, the background to the expulsion plans is numerous attacks in Pakistan. The government said 14 of the 24 suicide attacks this year were carried out by Afghans.
