“The police asked us, ‘What are you doing here? Go to your own country!’” said Farhang, 31, describing his treatment in Pakistan. “It was 1am … they put all us men in the police cars and took us to the police station … We spent 11 days in jail. Then they took us to the border and told us to cross. I crossed, but then
[a few days later] I returned to take my wife and child to Afghanistan. So I came to Kabul but I don’t have any work here
[or] a place to live.”
The police in Pakistan started targeting Afghans in the country soon after the Pakistani Taliban attacked a school in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, killing 132 children. Farhang told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that in July, the authorities took him and his neighbours from their homes. “They came to our house and kicked in the door,” he said. “The children were very afraid.”
Following last week’s horrific attacks in Paris, refugees in Europe face scapegoating and victimisation for an atrocity they bear no responsibility for. These fears have parallels in the Pakistani response to Afghan refugees following the Peshawar school attack. Farhang, originally from Parwan province in eastern Afghanistan, came to Pakistan with his family as a refugee in 1992 when he was eight, fleeing the terrible war in his homeland. He had lived here since, but in weeks and months after the school attack, police harassment, detention and extortion have forced many Afghans to return to Afghanistan. Farhang, like many others, faces an uncertain future without work or shelter in Afghanistan.
This week, HRW released a report documenting widespread police abuse of Afghans in Pakistan since December 2014. The report, based on interviews with Afghans who had returned to Afghanistan after living many years in Pakistan, and others still living in Pakistan, as well as Pakistani and Afghan government officials, documents a critical human rights problem. Afghans told HRW that the increasingly hostile climate in Pakistan had left them feeling trapped: fearful of returning to Afghanistan, of the Pakistani police raiding their homes and workplaces, and of the need to bribe the police to avoid arrest and detention. Many Afghans said that they returned to Afghanistan because the rampant extortion meant they could no longer make ends meet in Pakistan.
Pakistan has been hosting one of the world’s largest displaced populations for more than 35 years. According to estimates of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees and one million undocumented Afghans are living in Pakistan. Many of them came to Pakistan in the 1970s and have had children and grandchildren who have never lived in Afghanistan.
In many ways, successive Pakistani governments have responded to the challenge reasonably well. However, after public outrage following the school attack, instances of intimidation intensified to unprecedented levels and included threats from the police that Afghans should leave the country or face arrest. After the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government called for all Afghans to leave within a month of the attack, the minister of states and frontier regions, at a joint news conference with the UNHCR representative, called for reason, pointing out that there was no evidence that registered Afghans were involved in “terrorism-related” activities in Pakistan. In fact, many of the Afghans living in Pakistan had fled Afghanistan fearing Taliban atrocities.
There is always anger and pressure on governments to act after wanton acts of violence, like shooting down schoolchildren or young people at a concert. But it is also wrong and unjust to treat refugees as perpetrators or collaborators while they, too, are victims.
As Kenneth Roth, HRW’s executive director, said on November 16 after the Paris attacks, “There’s a tendency right now to blame the refugees, because apparently one of the participants in the attacks had entered Europe with the migrant flow.” But it was important, he said, that “Europe shouldn’t allow the fear of the refugee flow to overshadow the genuine problem that it has with social inclusion, and making sure that members of prior immigrant communities feel that they have a real place within European society.”
These words apply to Pakistan and its treatment of migrants and refugees as well. The Pakistani government should ensure that all law-enforcement and other government officials treat Afghans living in Pakistan with dignity and respect for their human rights in compliance with domestic and international law. Ending police abuses and ensuring that Afghans are treated fairly should be a first step towards formulating a viable legal framework to manage the Afghan population in Pakistan.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 19th, 2015.
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The writer is a lawyer and partner at Ijaz and Ijaz Co in Lahore saroop.ijaz@ tribune.com.pk More by Saroop Ijaz
Pakistan should send all these Afghans back to Afghanistan. Most Afghans are involved in anti-Pakistan activities.
So this is the manifestation ‘good’ governance of dharna walas in KPK. Shame on them for treating poor Afghans so badly.Why don’t government give them permanent stay in Pakistan is beyond comprehension.
The author should remember that the first Pakistani Prime Minister was murdered by an Afghan working for that nation’s government. Since the time the British left the region, successive regimes in Kabul have served as lackeys for India to foment trouble in KPK and Baluchistan rather than focus on improving lives for poor Afghans. When political parties and family members ( King and Sardar Daoud) fought among themselves and created instability in Kabul the Soviets moved in in but Pakistan still welcomed millions of refugees and worked to oust the Soviet army from Afghanistan. In the process, Pakistani was destabilized and suffered billions and billions of damages. Common Pakistani citizens are aware of Afghan activities among the refugee population in Peshawar and other parts of the country where suddenly there was more gun violence, violent crime, smuggling and prostitution. Don’t forget that most Afghan refugees who smuggle themselves to the West for the asylum do so with money earned in Pakistan where they had safety and lived openly. In Iran Afghan refugees were kept in camps. After the APS massacre which was orchestrated from Afghanistan, many Pakistani citizens finally got fed up. I agree that the majority of Afghan refugees are not to be blamed but Pakistan cannot house millions of Afghan refugees forever on the little money it gets from UN sources.
@Sami:
Fortunately there are not enough people like you otherwise Pakistan would have been receiving million of your countrymen expelled from countries world around.Thanks God there are still enough people in ruling class not showing insanity towards Afghans in Pakistan.
For the first time ever, I agree with Saroop!
“in many ways successive governments have done well …..half a line of appreciation for those thirty years and then the whole article. A dignfied but definitive plan should be made for their repatriation
Time to for Afghans to go.
How is this response any different from response of Europeans towards Syrian refugees after Paris attack.?
@Sumit:
Multiply the number of refugees by thirty and divide the economy by thirty when compared to those European countries
The question is why? Is it our responsibility to look after them forever? Pakistan is a third world country with limited resources. We can’t host Afgans forever. It’s about time they leave and if other countries have trouble with it then they are most welcome to accomodate Afghans.
@sabi: You mean millions of Pakistanis in countries world-over are ‘refugees’? Think twice before you try to be smart!
These Afghans should be sent back to their country with dignity. They should realize that they have an independent and sovereign country; which has now its own government, military, police and spy-agency!
Mr. Kenneth Roth and the other law-abiding agencies and the so-called writers should also realize that the international law asks for refugees to be ‘officially’ registered and live within the camps. But unfortunately, many of those Afghan refugees have bribed the corrupt officials to issue them computerized national identity cards – they have run out of the camps to other big cities and illegally run their business.
They should be sent back to Afghanistan sooner than later, for 35 years we have tolerated them; we did not achieve this country to take migrants from India and Afghanistan etc.
@Sarfaraz: Pakistan needs to focus on its own people. We have so many migrants and refugees from neighboring lands but it is not Pakistan’s responsibility to take them all with limited resources. Sorry to say this but even after so many years migrants from Afghanistan and India identify more with their home countries than where they now live. Is it so hard to understand why citizens are untrusting of foreigners if they do not respect where they live. The refugees who are smuggling themselves illegally to Europe begging for Panah or asylum must pledge to adhere to laws and rules. Why should it be different in Pakistan?
@sabi: Maybe you don’t know that most overseas Pakistanis, work, pay taxes and contribute to society. The vast majority went abroad as skilled immigrants on valid visas after interviews – not refugees who smuggle themselves abroad hiding in boads begging for asylum. The refugee migrants are the ones who mostly live on social assistance or state khayrat because they do not work and they live in government supported flats in poorer areas of Western cities. That’s why you’ll see large numbers of Somali, Afghan, Iraqi and other refugee communities in social housing areas. Western countries have resources for welfare but Pakistan does not have such resources so efforts should be made to encourage Western nations to take all the refugees from Pakistan so they can live on social assistance abroad.