Govt issues fresh call for Afghans to leave
QUETTA: Pakistan has issued a new call for Afghans living in the southwest to leave the country, triggering thousands to rush to the border, officials said.
“We have received directives from the home department to launch a fresh drive to repatriate all Afghans… in a respectful and orderly manner,” Meharullah, a senior government official in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, told AFP.
On Friday, there were “around 4,000 to 5,000 people at the Chaman border” waiting to return, said Habib Bingalzai, a senior government official in Chaman.
Abdul Latif Hakimi, the head of Refugee Registration in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province across the border, said they were aware of an increase in returning Afghans on Friday.
Millions of Afghans have poured into Pakistan over the past several decades, fleeing successive wars, as well as hundreds of thousands who arrived after the return of the Taliban government in 2021.
A deportation drive first launched in 2023 was renewed in April when the government rescinded hundreds of thousands of residence permits for Afghans, warning them of arrests if they did not leave.
Analysts say the expulsions are designed to pressure the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan to control militancy in the border regions.
In total, more than a million Afghans have left Pakistan since 2023, including more than 200,000 since April this year.
The campaign targeted the more than 800,000 Afghans with temporary residence permits, some of whom were born in Pakistan or have lived here for decades.
However, many Pakistanis have grown weary of hosting a large Afghan population as security and economic woes deepen, with the result that the deportation drive has widespread support.
Pakistan’s security forces are under enormous pressure along the border with Afghanistan, battling a growing insurgency in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
Last year, Pakistan recorded the highest number of deaths from attacks in a decade and the government frequently accuses Afghan nationals of taking part in attacks.
Iran has launched a similar large-scale deportation campaign of Afghans, which has seen more than 1.5 million sent back across the border.
Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2025
