PESHAWAR: Scores of Pakistani women, married to Afghan nationals, have appealed to authorities to award nationality of Pakistan to their spouses.

The women belonging to different localities of Peshawar gathered outside press club on Monday and appealed to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Chief of Army Staff Gen Raheel Sharif, and PTI chairman Imran Khan to declare their spouses as Pakistani nationals.

Holding banners and placards, the women shouted slogans for solution to their problems. Belonging to various localities of Peshawar including Corporation Colony, Madina Colony, Dalazaq Road, Charsadda Road, Patang Chowk and Gharibabad, they appealed to government to accept their husbands as Pakistani nationals so that they could live in the country.

The women said that they were reluctant to go to Afghanistan because they had received threats from Afghan people. “Our husbands have been deported to Afghanistan,” one of them told journalists.

Say they receive life threats from people in Afghanistan

She said that they had not even visited Afghanistan. They were unable to live there in such unfavourable conditions, she said, adding that their children were studying in Peshawar and their entire life would get disturbed.

“My husband was a driver and earning livelihood for my seven children. Now my husband has been departed to Afghanistan wherein he is jobless,” said another woman.

She claimed that her husband was born in Pakistan 40 years ago. “I am a Pakistani by nationality and have my Computerised National Identity Card. Pakistan is our country. Why government is not giving nationality to those Afghans, who have married Pakistani women” she questioned.

The women said that every country in the world gave nationality to emigrants but Pakistan didn’t provide that facility to their Afghan husbands.

Another woman said that their Afghans husbands had also taken some of their children to Afghanistan forcefully. She said that one of the children had come back to Pakistan after a long process and spending more than Rs60, 000.

She said that their children also did not want to go to Afghanistan. She demanded of the federal government to give Pakistani nationality to their husbands.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2016