By: Salman Rafi Sheikh
In the wake of the Pakistani government’s announcement last October that 1.7 million Afghan refugees would be forced back to Afghanistan, half a million people have already left, facing desperate privation as they return to one of the poorest countries on earth with nothing to take with them.
As many Afghan refugees have reported, Pakistani authorities haven’t allowed them to take even what they had earned or otherwise amassed. Thus the vast majority are not only displaced but were deprived of what rightfully belonged to them.
The majority of the 4 million-plus Afghans living in Pakistan have been there since the 1980s Soviet occupation of their country, although 600,000 to 800,000 are believed to have fled the Taliban takeover in 2021. They are facing a regime in Kabul that, ever since capturing power, has taken the country relentlessly backwards. It is a country still staggering from decades of war, a series of ruinous earthquakes, and a crippling economic crisis brought about by mismanagement. With 29 million of its own people in need of humanitarian support, Afghanistan has little to offer to those returning.
According to relief agencies, 80 percent of those returning are women and children. A major question for the refugees, as well as for millions of school-age girls already there, is that they have no access to education. In September 2021 and December 2022, the Taliban regime banned secondary and college/university education for them. A severe lack of food and shelter awaits every one of the displaced, with the Taliban regime doing little more than providing verbal support to help them start a “new” life.
But this was only the “first phase” of the deportations. Pakistan has already announced a “second phase,” which will see even registered Afghan refugees – those holding the Afghan Citizen Card (ACC), facing deportation. The number of registered refugees is even higher than those already forced out, and so is the overall scale of destitution facing all these people.
Between 2006 and 2007, Pakistan, in collaboration with the United Nations Human Rights Council, issued Proof of Residency (POR) cards to 2.15 million Afghans. In 2017, Pakistan began to issue Afghan Citizen Cards to those who were unable to get the POR card. In January 2022, the UNHRC estimated that about 840,000 Afghans held the ACC. When combined, about 3.7 million Afghans were living in Pakistan before October 2023. All of them now have their lives hanging in the balance.
In October, the caretaker Interior Minister, Sarfraz Bugti, said that the chief reason for deporting these refugees was security. “The most important thing that was decided was that the welfare and security of a Pakistani are most important for us over any country or its policy”, he said. Those living “illegally” i.e., those without registration, were seen to be a major cause of terrorism. No evidence has been presented. In fact, the major terror group in Pakistan, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), consists of Pakistanis primarily rather than Afghan nationals.
While the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) has also spread its tentacles from Afghanistan into Pakistan, its presence in Pakistan remains very small compared to Pakistan’s own insurgents and it includes not only some Afghan nationals but also many other nationalities. Still, the sheer size of the refugees dwarfs the IS-K by all means.
Pakistan also squarely blamed these refugees for smuggling, not only of goods but also foreign exchange. Therefore, sending these refugees back to Afghanistan is, in the eyes of Islamabad, a necessary step to improve Pakistan’s continuously deteriorating economic situation.
Yet this narrative is little more than scapegoating these refugees to shift attention away from macro issues plaguing Pakistan’s economy. One of these issues is extremely poor tax collection and the fact that the trading class i.e., traders, do not pay taxes. In the first eight months of the fiscal year since July 2023, Pakistan extracted Rs217 billion (US$779.5 million) from the salaried class. In contrast, traders – which constitute a multi-billion dollar sector – contributed only Rs11.2 billion.
In short, a vast majority of the business that takes place on an everyday basis in Pakistan is black money, where traders either do not disclose their assets or use bribery as a means to avoid taxation. Who gets bribed? It is primarily the officials of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). Recently, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif removed 25 officials of the FBR on corruption charges.
A second major issue plaguing Pakistan’s economy is how the political and economic elites use state resources to enrich themselves. According to a 2021 UNDP report, various elite privileges consume US$17.4 billion of Pakistan’s economy annually. This “consumption” takes place primarily in the form of tax relief, amnesties, subsidies, preferential access to loans, etc. The military, which otherwise consumes a hefty amount of money in terms of defense, is also a major beneficiary, receiving additional privileges of US$1.7 billion. (This is in addition to the fact that it does not pay taxes on the multi-billion dollar industry it runs in Pakistan.)
Yet no steps have been taken thus far to make reforms in these areas to improve Pakistan’s economy. Instead, millions of Afghans, who fled from violence in the first place, are now being forced back into a place dominated by a violent regime that Pakistan itself helped to capture power.
But ever since the Taliban’s return to power, Pakistan’s ties with the militant regime have deteriorated over the latter’s inability or unwillingness to eliminate the anti-Pakistan TTP based in Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban have repeatedly refused Pakistan’s “request,” instead calling the TTP Pakistan’s “internal problem.” Pakistan, on the other hand, blames Kabul for the recent surge in terror attacks by the TTP.
Because the Kabul regime is refusing to tackle terrorism, Pakistan is using the Afghan refugees to put an additional burden on the already economically weak Taliban regime in order to make it a bit more responsive to Pakistan’s security interests. Islamabad, as such, has repeatedly denied the Taliban regime’s request for a more nuanced and “friendly” approach towards these refugees.
But this is a recipe that can also seriously backfire. With the majority of Afghans going back to Afghanistan in highly impoverished condition, it presents an extremely favorable scenario for militant groups to find fresh recruits. Indeed, the Afghan Taliban itself is reportedly enlisting people from among these refugees to strengthen itself within Afghanistan. These refugees, who lost everything they earned after years and decades of work in Pakistan, have everything they need to support anti-Pakistan politics, including armed jihad.
Therefore, if Islamabad saw deportation as an effective counter-terrorism strategy, it is more likely to turn into a strategy feeding terrorism directly.
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