Afghans in Punjab: 'The police are a little confused'

[Kabira]

LAHORE: The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) helpline for Afghan refugees hasn't stopped ringing since the day after a suicide bomber struck Lahore's Mall road killing 14 people. Every day it has received no fewer than 200 calls per day, majority from Afghans living in Punjab complaining of abuse, harassment and violence by law enforcement agencies.

"This new kind of harassment is unprecedented," says Mudassar Javed, Director of the Islamabad-based Society for Human Rights and Prisoners' Aid, which operates the helpline in partnership with the UNHCR.

"For the first time, Afghan women and children are being detained along with the men.”

Last week, in the city of Rahimyar Khan, several poor families, including children as young as two, were arrested even though they held Proof of Registration cards that allow them to reside legally in Pakistan.

Javed and his team are in contact with authorities to plead for their release. "The police claim to have lost the cards. This seems to be a new tactic to keep the Afghan behind bars for longer," he says.

In February Pakistan experienced a resurgence of terrorism. Over 100 people were killed in nine major terror incidents. After the Lahore bombing – the prime minister's hometown – Punjab's chief minister and brother of the PM, Shahbaz Sharif, delivered a video address saying the suicide bomber was identified as an Afghan. Shortly afterwards, it seems, the Punjab police launched an unannounced and unprovoked crackdown on Afghan refugee camps in the province.

Police have reportedly arrested over 200 suspects, mostly Afghan nationals, in mopping-up operations across the province.

Afghan refugees sit on sacks filled with used plastic items to sell at their makeshift shelter in a slum on the outskirt of Lahore January 12, 2015.—Photo by Reuters

The refugees first arrived in Pakistan fleeing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Today, there are an estimated 1.23 million registered and 600,000 undocumented Afghan refugees. After hosting them for several decades, Pakistan has recently intensified its drive to send them back home, labelling them a national security risk.

The bulk of Afghan refugees reside in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan province, while a far smaller percentage live in Punjab. There are an estimated 150,000 Afghans in Punjab, according to the UNHCR, most living in poor neighborhoods, where they work as laborers, vendors, or garbage scavengers.

Noor Aftab, 36, was born in Pakistan. He has lived with his five children in a rented house outside Rawalpindi for several years. Now, he is being told to leave. "The police barged into our house the other day. They told our home owners that they should be ashamed for hosting Afghans," Aftab told Geo.TV.

"There is not one man in my community who has not been to a police station," says Jahangir Khan, a resident of Lahore, who collects paper and plastic waste from the streets to sell. "Everyone is being picked up these days. Police are searching from house to house."

The security agencies, he adds, keep their residency cards and present them in court as illegal immigrants.

Troublingly, the recent raids are also alleged to be racially motivated. According to human rights activists, law enforcement agencies are targeting Punjab's ethnic Pashtun population with the Afghan refugees, who are also predominately Pashtuns.

Government officials admit there have been some, although rare, incidents of mistaken identity.

"The police are running around a little confused," says Usman Ghani, project manager at the government's Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees in Punjab. "They do at times find it difficult to differentiate between a Pashtun from Pakistan and one from Afghanistan."

On Monday, the Khyber Pakhunthkwa Assembly witnessed a heated debate over the ongoing arrests and alleged stereotyping of Pashtuns in Punjab. "If the Punjab government does not stop, then people in Peshawar, Mardan and Charsadda have the right to expel the Punjabi-speaking people from the province," Dawn quoted an Awami National Party leader as saying.

Meanwhile, the federal government has issued a notification, dated Feb.24, which extends the legal residency status of the refugees till December 31. It further calls for the registration of all Afghan refugees and advises state institutions that, until the documentation process is complete, the "harassment of unregistered Afghan refugees and application of Section 14 of the Foreigners Act, 1946 should be avoided."

Even after the latest directive, the arrest and detentions are only getting uglier, says Javed.

"It is unfortunate. Pakistan has hosted the Afghans for 40 years, and it still does not have a single decent policy to deal with them."
https://www.geo.tv/latest/132937-Afghans-in-Punjab-The-police-are-a-little-confused

 

[Kabira]

Interestingly some are playing pathan/pakhtun card but same is happening in KPK.

JALOZAI: A wander through the narrow, unpaved streets of this Turkmen Afghan refugee camp feels like walking through a ghost town. The dirt lanes are lined with crumbling mud-and-stone homes, abandoned by refugees who chose, under a campaign of increasing pressure from Pakistani authorities, to repatriate to their native Afghanistan. In some dwellings, people’s belongings are still visible through walls eroded by rain. An errant shoe, or a cloth waving in a doorway, are the only signs left of decades of a life lived in Pakistan.

Last year, more than 606,000 Afghan refugees repatriated to their native country, the highest number for more than 10 years, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). In terms of registered refugees, it was a six-fold increase from the year before, when only 58,211 repatriated. Those who repatriated willingly in 2016 were also joined by 22,559 people who were deported, according to the IOM.

Once, not long ago, this camp was bustling with activity. When it was established in 2002, it was home to more than 25,000 refugees, says 49-year-old Shahzada Khan, who heads the committee that runs the camp. Today, only about 3,500 people remain. The rest have fled what residents describe as a sustained campaign of harassment, abuse and threats by Pakistani authorities over the last two years.

This campaign, they say, has intensified since a series of attacks in February killed more than 120 people across Pakistan, most of them at a shrine in Sehwan Sharif.

“Many people have been picked up from our village,” says Khan’s son Hafiz Ahmed, 22, describing police raids on the refugee camp since the Sehwan attack. “The police have taken them even if they had [refugee registration] cards. In some cases, they even cut up their registration cards. We are afraid to leave the house — they might jail us [by] implicating us in some attack.”

Since last week, the committee that runs the camp has decided that no refugees are to take the risk of venturing into Peshawar, located about 35km away.

“We do not even take Peshawar’s name! Even if we have to go to the hospital, we tell the police beforehand,” says Ahmed.

Ahmed’s account is consistent with the state’s own rhetoric, often painting Afghans as a security risk. In the security sweeps since the Sehwan, Lahore and Mohmand attacks, scores of Afghan refugees have been arrested, the police and military say, and the issue of Afghan involvement in attacks on Pakistani soil has been raised by both the Foreign Office and the military.

The latest raids, however, appear to be part of an ongoing campaign targeting refugees, one that started in 2015 following the Army Public School (APS) attack. Extensions to the refugees’ government-issued registration cards — their right to remain — have grown shorter in duration. Where once deadlines for repatriation were extended for two or three years as a matter of course, that period has now come down to months at a time.

The lack of clarity on refugees’ right to remain has also emboldened the police to challenge Afghans, many say, since most have not been issued new cards with the updated deadline. “The [refugee registration] card is now just like this piece of paper,” says Khan, touching a page of my notepad. “And it can be torn up just as easily.”

Pakistan has been hosting millions of refugees for more than 30 years. At its peak, Pakistan was home to at least five million Afghans. Today, at least 1.3 million registered refugees remain. (The number of undocumented migrants remains unclear.) Generations of Afghans have been born in Pakistan, grew up here and say that for all intents and purposes, they are Pakistani.

“My life’s best moments, from playing in the streets as a child to my schooling, college and now university are in Pakistan,” says Khalid Amiri, 22, whose family fled Jalalabad when he was just two years old. “People accepted us. We played in the same playgrounds. My friends used to come to my house. They would meet my mother, I would go visit them. But after [the APS attack], there was a sponsored, state-oriented campaign against us. Afghans may not like it if we say that we feel Pakistani, but we do feel it. It is the truth. We live like Pakistanis. We live in the Pakistani culture.”

Young refugees’ identity is caught in flux — knowing little of a homeland they’re constantly told to return to, rejected by the only home they’ve ever known.

“If I go to Afghanistan, it’ll be very difficult for me there,” says Abdul Rashid, 21, who is just starting his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Peshawar. “I don’t speak Farsi, I don’t know of Afghan history, I don’t know of their education system. It would feel like a foreign land.”

As we speak, back at the Turkmen refugee camp, Hafiz Ahmed grows animated, talking about how he loves Pakistan “so much so that I cannot describe it”.

“Why don’t you become Pakistani, then?” someone asks.

“I want to,” he says, quietly. “But they won’t let me.”

The writer is Al Jazeera’s web correspondent in Pakistan.

asad.hashim@gmail.com.

Published in Dawn, March 3rd, 2017
https://www.dawn.com/news/1318100/forced-from-home

 

[ali_raza]

afghans need to be out come what may

 

[pakdefender]

Afghans have got to be the most stupid people , they have squandered almost infinite amount of good will that Pakistanis had for them

We grew up on a dose of 'Afghans are our brothers and we have to give them refuge' ( Soviet invasion time ) and trust me vast majority Pakistanis truly believed in this

But these namak haram always saw Pakistan through their own narrow vision , always aligning with Pakistan's enemies

The SOBs in Kabul need to be taught a lesson , like USA taught to Japan , then they will come to their senses

 

[Menace2Society]

Afghans have got to be the most stupid people , they have squandered almost infinite amount of good will that Pakistanis had for them

We grew up on a dose of 'Afghans are our brothers and we have to give them refuge' ( Soviet invasion time ) and trust me vast majority Pakistanis truly believed in this

But these namak haram always saw Pakistan through their own narrow vision , always aligning with Pakistan's enemies

The SOBs in Kabul need to be taught a lesson , like USA taught to Japan , then they will come to their senses

I want Kunar and Nuristan destroyed into rubble. One giant bomb right in the middle.

How dare they bring up their children with the blood of Pakistani children from APS. One giant bomb to rip them all into shreds.

 

[MomandKhan]

I want Kunar and Nuristan destroyed into rubble. One giant bomb right in the middle.

How dare they bring up their children with the blood of Pakistani children from APS. One giant bomb to rip them all into shreds.

You must be so lonely and without friends. Seek a doctor.

 

[Clutch]

You must be so lonely and without friends. Seek a doctor.

All afghans should leave pakistan. They are not welcome here anymore.

 

[Menace2Society]

You must be so lonely and without friends. Seek a doctor.

I am going to have some restraint and not say much but your community has destroyed my Pakistan and Afghanistan is forever my enemy.

I don't care what you think Pakistan has done to Afghanistan, they never invaded Afghanistan and Afghanistan has always been a violent place. I am sick of the arguments Afghanis present.

Just remember I hold Afghanistan in utter contempt, I want justice and I want Pakistan to become what its destined to become.

 

[Khan_21]

You must be so lonely and without friends. Seek a doctor.

Afghans are probably the most jahil people I have ever seen . That is why you are having war since 40 years . When foreigners go away you people start killing each other like bloodthirsty animals . Pakistan in 2020 will be amongst top 25 economies and you will still be stuck with Durand line .

 

[TMA]

Afghans are probably the most jahil people I have ever seen . That is why you are having war since 40 years . When foreigners go away you people start killing each other like bloodthirsty animals . Pakistan in 2020 will be amongst top 25 economies and you will still be stuck with Durand line .

Inshallah!!

 

[xairhossi]

This article mentions Turkmen Afghans as well. Does anyone know what percentage or number of non-Pashtun Afghans (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras etc.) are in Punjab?

 

[haviZsultan]

I have never witnessed an Afghan who loves Pakistan, But if Amiri is by heart a Pakistani he should be given citizenship. Think big. We can setup the grounds for conquering Afghanistan proper with loyalists to Pakistan from their land acting as a vanguard. The Afghans who are Pakistanized can play a role in bridging tensions. I have never met an Afghan who is pro Pakistani though, very sad to say so.

 

[Kabira]

This article mentions Turkmen Afghans as well. Does anyone know what percentage or number of non-Pashtun Afghans (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras etc.) are in Punjab?

Probably 10-15% according to reports.

 

[haviZsultan]

This article mentions Turkmen Afghans as well. Does anyone know what percentage or number of non-Pashtun Afghans (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras etc.) are in Punjab?

There are different figures and in an ethnically polarized society like Afghanistan there are biases as well so we never know which statistic is right. Same for Pakistan. CIA factbook says 42% of Afghans are Pashtuns. The rest must be non pashtun, of course.

 

[xairhossi]

There are different figures and in an ethnically polarized society like Afghanistan there are biases as well so we never know which statistic is right. Same for Pakistan. CIA factbook says 42% of Afghans are Pashtuns. The rest must be non pashtun, of course.

I was talking about the Afghan refugees in Punjab. I wonder if they retain Dari. I think they are less intergrated than the Afghan Pashtun refugees?