PESHAWAR: Although President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending a resettlement has left thousands of Afghans in limbo, only a tiny fraction of refugees who applied for relocation to a third country through UN-supported channels have managed to secure resettlement so far.

The executive order, the Reali­gning the United States Refugee Programme, will go into effect on Monday and suspend the US Refu­gee Admissions Programme (USRAP).

This would also have a deep impact on the United Nations High Commission for Refugees’ (UNHCR) third-country resettlement programme in Pakistan, under which an estimated 200,000 Afghans are awaiting relocation to 12 countries, including the United States, an official privy to developments told Dawn.

UNHCR-led global resettlement process will also be hit by Trump’s suspension of refugee programme

The US Mission in Pakistan had shared a list of more than 25,000 Afghan individuals with the Mini­stry of Interior in Oct 2023; their resettlement cases were said to be under process and they were letters to enable them to stay on in Pakistan.

Thousands of Afghans, who had previously worked with the Americans in Afghanistan, fled their country along with their families, following Taliban’s triumphant return to Kabul and applied for relocation and asylum in the US or other countries.

Many of them were overstaying their visas, relying solely on the document provided by the US Mission in Islamabad. But following the suspension of the resettlement programme by the Trump administration, it is not immediately clear what their fate would be and how Islamabad will now react.

It is also not clear how many of the 25,000 have since been cleared for migration to the US, but a government official described the process as being “painfully slow”.

The official said that Islamabad would now be waiting for Washington to clarify the situation concerning the fate of thousands of Afghans residing in Pakistan on “borrowed time.”

“Everything seems to have come to a halt now.”

These 25,000 or so refugees are in addition to the over 200,000 Afghans, who have applied to the UNHCR for relocation to countries in Europe, as well as Canada and the US.

In partnership with SHARP, a local NGO, UNHCR is overseeing the entire process. An official familiar with the process said that only around 2,000 individuals could be resettled so far, a dismal 1pc disposal rate.

UNHCR said it had submitted the cases of over 10,000 refugees for resettlement to different countries including more than 3,000 to the United States.

“Some of those have already departed to different countries including the United States”, Qaisar Khan Afridi, UNHCR spokesperson in Pakistan, told Dawn.

The official said that Afghans who had entered Pakistan – some on valid travel documents and others illegally — were given a temporary stay in the country on the request of the US Mission in Islamabad on the assurance that their cases were being processed for relocation to the United States.

“The understanding that we have now, from the media, that the refugee programme has been put on hold, at least for three months. What happens afterwards, no one has a clue — I bet not even our American friends in Islamabad. They are probably as clueless as we are,” the official remarked.

He said that the government would rather wait than make a hasty decision to repatriate Afghans who have overstayed their visas in Pakistan.

“I don’t see forced repatriation of the Afghans to the country they had fled in duress,” he said, adding that like the US embassy, the government would also have to wait for more detailed policy guidelines from Washington.

“But I don’t see President Trump in a hurry to resume the programme any time soon,” he concluded.

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2025