Afghan Taliban ‘unlikely to stop support for TTP’

Anwar Iqbal 

Published February 16, 2023

WASHINGTON: Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers are unlikely to discontinue supporting militants in Pakistan as they feel that economic troubles prevent Islamabad from launching a major operation against the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), according to a new report from a leading US think tank.

“Amid Pakistan’s economic crisis and the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban have reemerged as an increasingly potent threat,” warned the report, released in Washington on Tuesday by the US Institute of Peace (USIP).

Referring to Kabul’s recent criticism of Islamabad’s policies, the report argued that “this undiplomatic rhetoric underscores the Taliban’s determination to continue supporting the TTP, even in the face of intensified pressure from Pakistan”.

USIP argued that the Taliban’s response to being confronted about their support for the TTP “has been to level counter-accusations — which does not signal an impending shift away from that support”.

USIP report fears Pakistan’s deteriorating economy will limit its ability to act against terrorists

Such rhetorical signals are matched by anecdotal reports from UN officials and other observers — quoted in the USIP report — of TTP individuals moving freely and conducting business in Afghan cities.

Interlocutors with access to Kandahar report that the Taliban emir and his close advisers were “unlikely to waiver in supporting the TTP on ideological grounds,” the USIP report noted.

According to this report, another key factor shaping the Pakistani response is the country’s deteriorating economy, which is on the brink of a default. “That limits Pakistan’s military options. Pakistan can carry out raids and undertake defensive actions inside the country, but it doesn’t have the resources for a sustained high-intensity campaign,” USIP warned.

The report noted that “Pakistan has flirted with the idea of cross-border airstrikes again,” which it last conducted in April 2022 and it also faced “growing pressure for action,” but seemed reluctant to act.

The pressure came from political groups in Pakistan who were “framing the terrorism resurgence as a conspiracy by the military to block former prime minister Imran Khan’s return to power and to get American aid,” the report added.

But the report argued that economic pressures and the risk of a conflict spiral, especially amid reports of Taliban fighters joining the TTP, “may induce doubts in Pakistan about such a cross-border operation”.

The TTP’s escalating campaign of violence “is a function of its growing political and material strength — reflected in its political cohesion, expanding cadre of trained fighters, suicide bombers, weapons, and equipment,” the report added.

“The Afghan Taliban remain very supportive of the TTP and are providing the group with a permissive safe haven,” the report claimed. It noted that the TTP also had a lot of popular support in Afghanistan, “where both Taliban and non-Taliban constituencies get behind the TTP due to a fervent dislike for Pakistan”.

The USIP reported that some Taliban fighters were also joining the TTP, and some recent bombers, who carried out attacks inside Pakistan, were also Afghan.

The report also pointed out that a handful of Taliban leaders, in particular Taliban Interior Minister Siraj Haqqani, had restrained the TTP on Pakistani requests on occasion. “Yet the balance of opinion within the Taliban is strongly in favour of the TTP and its campaign. In particular, Taliban Amir Hibatullah Akhundzada agrees with the TTP that Pakistani system is un-Islamic,” the report concluded.

Taliban-TTP nexus

Editorial

Published February 17, 2023

IF the analysis of an American government think tank stating that the Afghan Taliban are unwilling to end their support for the banned TTP is accurate, it would put to rest the illusion harboured by some in our security establishment that a Taliban government in Kabul is good for Pakistan. If anything, the US Institute of Peace report paints an unsettling picture, which shows that not only are the Afghan rulers allowing TTP fighters to freely operate on their soil, but that they believe that Pakistan will not launch a full-blown anti-TTP operation because of its financial woes. The report observes that TTP operatives move freely in Afghanistan, while adding that “the Afghan Taliban remain very supportive of the TTP and are providing the group with a permissive safe haven”. Moreover, there appears to be support for the TTP within Afghan society beyond the Taliban due to deeply entrenched anti-Pakistan views. In fact, some of the bombers who carried out attacks inside Pakistan have been identified as Afghans. And while some within the Taliban ruling elite, such as the Haqqani faction, favour a softer line towards Pakistan, and have tried to stop the TTP from launching attacks against this country, Taliban supremo Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada remains convinced Pakistan’s system is “un-Islamic”, much as his ideological comrades in the TTP do.

Where Pakistan’s security is concerned, there were warnings all along that the Afghan Taliban would do little to rein in the TTP, and these findings only confirm those fears. While Pakistan’s options may be limited, it needs to firmly let the Taliban rulers know that hosting and supporting a group visibly hostile to this country will have far-reaching implications. For one, Pakistan should stop defending Kabul’s rulers at international fora unless they clean up their act. Moreover, while times may indeed be tough, the state needs to make it clear that the TTP and other terrorists trying to harm Pakistan will be dealt with severely on the battlefield. Also, Pakistan should coordinate with regional states to communicate to Kabul that terrorists cannot find a safe haven on Afghan soil. Russia, China, Iran and the Central Asian states are all wary of terrorist groups finding refuge in Afghanistan, and Pakistan needs to use regional platforms to let the Taliban know that either they can neutralise the terrorists, or face further isolation.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2023

Pakistan PM: 'US Really Messed It Up in Afghanistan'

By Ayaz Gul
July 28, 2021 

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan’s prime minister says that America’s accelerated troop exit from Afghanistan has left Washington with no “bargaining power” for arranging a peace deal between warring Afghans.

“I think the U.S. has really messed it up in Afghanistan,” Imran Khan said in an interview with PBS NewsHour aired on Tuesday night.

Khan stressed that the United States and NATO allies had about 150,000 troops in Afghanistan and that was the time when they ought to go for a political solution rather than trying to militarily end the war with the Taliban insurgency there.

“But once they had reduced the troops to barely 10,000, and then, when they gave an exit date, the Taliban thought they had won. And so, therefore, it was very difficult for now to get them (the Taliban) to compromise,” he told the American broadcaster.

President Joe Biden said earlier this month that “We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build. And it’s the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.”

The Taliban has captured vast areas across Afghanistan, including key trade routes with neighboring countries, since U.S.-led foreign troops officially began leaving the country in early May.

Humvees that belong to Afghan Special Forces are seen destroyed during heavy clashes with Taliban, in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, July 13, 2021.

The international military drawdown has largely been completed and all American as well as allied troops will have left Afghanistan by the end of August under orders from Biden amid fears the Taliban could regain control of the war-ravaged country.

“Here were the U.S. for two decades in Afghanistan trying to force a military solution. The reason why we are in this position now is because the military solution failed,” Khan said.

U.S. and Afghan officials have long accused Pakistan of allowing the Taliban to use sanctuaries in the neighboring country to direct attacks inside Afghanistan, charges Islamabad denies.

Khan’s government maintains it has used whatever leverage Islamabad had over the Taliban to bring them to the table for peace talks with Washington. The negotiations culminated in the February 2020 deal, setting the stage for all American troops to withdraw from the Afghan war after 20 years.

But the ensuing peace talks between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government have met with little success and largely stalled.

“Absolutely, there's nothing more we can do, except push them as much as we can for a political settlement. That's all,” Khan told the PBS show when asked if Pakistan needs to do more to press the Taliban to end their violent campaign.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani earlier in the month alleged 10,000 jihadi fighters have recently entered his country from sanctuaries in Pakistan and other areas to join Taliban ranks.

“This is absolute nonsense,” Khan responded. “Why don't they give us evidence of this? When they say that Pakistan gave safe havens, sanctuaries to (the) Taliban, where are these safe havens?,” he asked.

Supporters of the Taliban carry Islamic flags after the Taliban said they seized the Afghan border town of Spin Boldaka across from the town of Chaman, Pakistan, July 14, 2021.

The prime minister went on to explain insurgents could hide among the refugee camps in Pakistan that still host three million Afghans, saying the Taliban constitute the majority in the refugee population.

“(The) Taliban are not some military outfit. They are normal civilians. And if there are some civilians in these camps, how is Pakistan supposed to hunt these people down? How can you call them sanctuaries?” he asked.

Khan feared a “protracted civil war” would pose security challenges to Pakistan and could trigger a fresh refugee influx that his country could ill-afford due to its economic challenges.

FILE - Children of Afghan refugees play outside tents in Afghan Basti area on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, June 19, 2021.

He defended his decision to not allow the U.S. to establish military bases on Pakistani soil for anti-terrorism operations in Afghanistan after all American troops leave the neighboring country.

Khan explained that Pakistan’s decision to join the U.S.-led war on terrorism after the September 11, 2001 strikes against America triggered a domestic militant backlash, killing 70,000 Pakistanis and inflicting an estimated $150 billion in losses to the national economy.

“Now, if there's a conflict going on in Afghanistan and there are (U.S.) bases in Pakistan, we then become targets,” he said.

“We want to be partners in peace, but not in conflict,” Khan emphasized when asked what kind of relationship Islamabad wants with Washington.

Khan’s interview came while his national security advisor, Moeed Yusuf, is in Washington for official talks with his U.S. counterpart, Jake Sullivan, on how to move a traditionally rollercoaster bilateral relationship. The head of the Pakistani spy agency is also said to be accompanying Yusuf.

Afghanistan: The Costs

'How Can Pakistan Hunt Them Down?' 

PM Imran Khan Calls Taliban 'Normal Civilians' as Afghanistan Sees Red

Imran Khan stressed that Pakistan hosts three million Afghan refugees of which the majority are Pashtuns, the same ethnic group as the Taliban fighters.

Pakistan has been long accused of helping the Taliban militarily, financially and with intelligence inputs in their fight against the Afghanistan government.

THE TALIBAN WERE CREATED BY THE PAKISTAN SECRET SERVICE UNDER BENAZIR BHUTTO

 NEWS18.COM

LAST UPDATED:JULY 29, 2021,

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has called Taliban “normal civilians”, not military outfits, and asked how the country is supposed to hunt them down when it has three million Afghan refugees at the border.

In an interview with PBS NewsHour aired Tuesday night, Khan stressed that Pakistan hosts three million Aghan refugees of which the majority are Pashtuns, the same ethnic group as the Taliban fighters.

“Now, there are camps of 500,000 people; there are camps of 100,000 people. And Taliban are not some military outfits, they are normal civilians. And if there are some civilians in these camps, how is Pakistan supposed to hunt these people down? How can you call them sanctuaries?" he argued.

When asked about alleged Taliban safe havens in Pakistan, the Prime Minister responded: “Where are these safe-havens? There are three million refugees in Pakistan who are the same ethnic group as the Taliban…"

Pakistan has been long accused of helping the Taliban militarily, financially and with intelligence inputs in their fight against the Afghanistan government, but Imran Khan dismissed these accusations as “extremely unfair".

Islamabad has issued “official warning" to Kabul that any “move to dislodge Taliban" from its borders will be “faced and repelled by the Pakistan Air Force", claimed Afghanistan’s Vice President Amrullah Saleh, accusing the neighbours of providing “close air support" to the Islamic fundamentalist outfit.

“Pakistan air force has issued official warning to the Afghan Army and Air Force that any move to dislodge the Taliban from Spin Boldak area will be faced and repelled by the Pakistan Air Force. Pak air force is now providing close air support to Taliban in certain areas," Saleh tweeted.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/07/why-is-pakistan-seeing-surge-in-taliban.html

Some Afghans blame neighboring Pakistan for Taliban gains

By KATHY GANNON

1 of 11
FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2020 file photo, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, right, and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan stand before a joint news conference at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan. As the Taliban swiftly capture territory in Afghanistan, many Afghans blame Pakistan for the insurgents’ success, pointing to their use of Pakistani territory in multiple ways. Pressure is mounting on Islamabad, which initially brought the Taliban to the negotiating table, to get them to stop the onslaught and go back to talks. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — When Wahab disappeared from his home in Afghanistan to sign on for jihad, it was in neighboring Pakistan that he got his training.

The 20-year-old was recruited by childhood friends and was taken to a militant outpost in Parachinar, on Pakistan’s rugged mountainous border with Afghanistan. There, he underwent training, preparing to fight alongside the Afghan Taliban, a relative told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals from militants and government security agents.

As the Taliban swiftly capture territory in Afghanistan, many Afghans blame Pakistan for the insurgents’ success, pointing to their use of Pakistani territory in multiple ways. Pressure is mounting on Islamabad, which initially brought the Taliban to the negotiating table, to get them to stop the onslaught and go back to talks.

While analysts say Pakistan’s leverage is often overstated, it does permit the Taliban leadership on its territory and its wounded warriors receive treatment in Pakistani hospitals. Their children are in school in Pakistan and some among them own property. Some among Pakistan’s politicians have rebranded the insurgents as “the new, civilized Taliban.”



Ismail Khan, a powerful U.S.-allied warlord, who is trying to defend his territory of Herat in western Afghanistan from a Taliban onslaught, told local media recently the war raging in his homeland was the fault of Pakistan.

“I can say openly to Afghans that this war, it isn’t between Taliban and the Afghan Government. It is Pakistan’s war against the Afghan nation,” he said. “The Taliban are their resource and are working as a servant.”

Pakistan has tried unsuccessfully to convince Afghans they don’t want a Taliban government back in Afghanistan. They say the days of Pakistan seeing Afghanistan as a client state, to provide so-called “strategic depth” against its hostile neighbor India, is a thing of the past.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has told every public and private forum that Pakistan wants peace in Afghanistan, has no favorites in the battle and is deeply opposed to a military takeover by the Taliban.

The country’s powerful army chief has twice walked out of meetings with the Taliban, frustrated at their intransigence and infuriated by what he sees as the Taliban’s determination to return to full power in Afghanistan, according to senior security officials familiar with the meetings. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they had no authority to discuss the meetings.

Still, Afghans are unconvinced. Even the international community is skeptical. The United Nations last week rebuffed Pakistan’s request to address a special meeting on Afghanistan to again give its side.

The criticism is fueled by images of slain Taliban fighters being buried in Pakistan at funerals attended by hundreds, waving the group’s flags. Last year, Prime Minister Khan called Osama bin Laden a martyr in a speech to Parliament, seen as a nod to militants.

When the Taliban were battling Afghan security forces in an assault on the Afghan border town Spin Boldak, wounded insurgents were treated at Pakistani hospitals in Chaman. The Taliban took the town and still hold it.

A doctor in Chaman told the AP he treated dozens of wounded Taliban. Several were transferred to hospitals in the Pakistani city of Quetta for further treatment, he said. Quetta is also where several in the Taliban leadership reportedly live, as well as in the Arabian Sea port city of Karachi. The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

In thousands of madrassas, or religious schools, around Pakistan, some students are inspired to jihad in Afghanistan, according to analysts as well as Pakistani and international rights groups.

Their recruitment largely goes on unhindered, interrupted occasionally when a local news story reports bodies of fighters returning from Afghanistan. Last month, Pakistani authorities sealed the Darul-Aloom-Ahya-ul Islam madrassa outside Peshawar after the body of the cleric’s nephew returned home to a hero’s burial. The madrassa had operated freely for decades, even as the cleric admitted he sent his students to fight in Afghanistan.

One of Wahab’s cousins, Salman, went from a madrassa in Pakistan to join the Pakistani Taliban several years ago. Wahab was inspired to join the militants by propaganda videos purporting to show atrocities against Muslims by foreign troops. He ran away from his home in Afghanistan’s border regions earlier this year, but his family was able to track him down in Pakistan and bring him home before he became a fighter, his relative said.

In mosques and on the streets in Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, militants preach jihad and raise money, the relative said, though they are less aggressive in recruiting because of Pakistani military operations in the area in recent years.

Still, Amir Rana, executive director of the independent Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, said that unless Pakistani authorities adopt a “zero tolerance” for jihadis, the country will forever face international criticism and suspicion. “Justifying it has to stop,” he said.

In response to AP’s request for comment, a senior security official acknowledged that sympathies for extremists exist in conservative Pakistan. He said it began with a U.S.-backed program to motivate Afghans to fight the Soviets in the 1980s, which glorified jihad and portrayed the occupying troops as “godless communists.” He said Pakistan is firm it doesn’t want a Taliban-only government in Kabul, saying it would fan extremism.

Two security officials denied that jihadi groups in the border region receive any official help. They said a nearly completed fence being built by Pakistan along the long border with Afghanistan will stop the smuggling of fighters across. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.

Pakistan has its own concerns, accusing Afghanistan of harboring militants opposed to the Islamabad government. Pakistani security officials say their country’s rival India is allowed by Kabul’s intelligence agency to stage covert attacks against Pakistan using militants in Afghanistan. In the last six months, they say more than 200 Pakistani military personnel have been killed by insurgents crossing the border,

The border, known as the Durand Line, speaks to the deeply troubled relationship between the two neighbors. To this day, Afghan leaders do not recognize the Durand Line and claim some Pakistani areas dominated by ethnic Pashtuns as Afghan territory, Pashtuns on both sides of the border share tribal links, and Afghan Pashtuns form the backbone of the Taliban.

Analysts say Islamabad has fueled extremist sentiment and worked with militants when it was in its interests. It was during the long fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan that Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency developed deep ties with many of the most radical of Afghans, including the notorious Haqqani group, arguably the strongest faction among the Afghan Taliban.

“Islamabad does wield extensive leverage over the Taliban,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Wilson Center. “But the Taliban, which is fighting a war it believes it’s winning, has the luxury of resisting Pakistani entreaties to ease violence and commit to talks.”

“For the Taliban, the calculus is simple: Why quit when you’re ahead?”

Why is Pakistan seeing a surge in Taliban support?

Pakistani citizen Abdul Rasheed died in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province earlier this month. Hundreds of people attended the 22-year-old's funeral near Peshawar and chanted pro-Taliban slogans.

 

THE TALIBAN WERE CREATED BY THE PAKISTAN SECRET SERVICE UNDER BENAZIR BHUTTO



Analysts say Islamabad's alleged support to the Taliban could dent Pakistan's reputation in the international community

Videos of Pakistani citizens holding Taliban flags and chanting Islamist slogans at rallies to show support for the Afghan insurgents have been circulating on social media. This comes amid rapid Taliban advances in Afghanistan ahead of the complete withdrawal of US troops by September.

Islamic clerics in various parts of the country are also soliciting support for the Afghan Taliban and calling for donations.

Many locals and witnesses in the city of Quetta and district of Pishin of Balochistan province told DW that there had been an increased pro-Taliban activity in their areas.

"The Taliban enjoy local support in our area, but the rallies are not possible without support from state authorities," a resident told DW on condition of anonymity. "Initially, the clerics were asking for donations for the Afghan Taliban at mosques; now they are coming door-to-door to generate funds for the 'Afghan jihad,'" he said.

Mohsin Dawar, a progressive opposition lawmaker from Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas, said that "the Taliban continue to roam freely in different parts of Pakistan, including Quetta."

"It is not possible without the state's support," he said.

Government officials say the reports about pro-Taliban rallies and donations are unfounded. "The allegations are baseless. No such thing is happening," Zahid Hafeez Chuadhary, a spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, told DW.

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is officially banned in the country, but experts say Islamabad's alleged support to the Afghan Taliban is giving impetus to the outfit.

'Taliban funerals' in Pakistan

Taliban gains in Afghanistan are also encouraging Pakistani Islamists to join their ranks in the war-ravaged country. According to local sources, dozens of Pakistanis have been killed in Afghanistan in the past few months while fighting alongside the Taliban against Afghan forces.

Analysts say Pakistani authorities have not taken any action to stop their movement. Social media posts have shown announcements and advertisements for their memorial services, as their dead bodies return to their hometowns.

Hundreds of people have attended the funerals of the Pakistani fighters in various parts of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhawa and the southwestern Balochistan provinces.

Abdul Rasheed, a 22-year-old Taliban supporter, died in Nangarhar, Afghanistan, earlier this month. His funeral took place on July 11. Reports emerged that Islamist sympathizers chanted pro-Taliban slogans in his funeral, and hundreds of people visited his family to congratulate them on Rasheed's "martyrdom."

"Pakistan derives leverage over the Taliban not just because of the safe havens it has provided to the group's leaders, but also through the medical facilities it provides for Taliban fighters and support for the group's families," Michael Kugelman, deputy director and senior associate for South Asia at the Washington-based Wilson Center, told DW.

"Islamabad has previously suggested that its relationship with the Taliban puts it in a great position to facilitate talks between the insurgents and the Americans, and more recently the Afghan state. But, when it says it has limited leverage, it appears to be contradicting its own message. There is public support for the Taliban within Pakistan and over the years Pakistani nationals remain their volunteer fighters," he added.

Strategic contradictions

Many Afghan and Western officials accuse Islamabad of providing safe havens and military support to the Taliban, which could further dent Pakistan's international reputation.

"The pro-Taliban rallies indicate two things: the state's inability and unwillingness to counter violent extremism as the next step after military operations. The government has not done much to mainstream Islamic madrasas and extremist groups because of political and strategic contradictions," Amber Rahim Shamsi, a senior journalist and political analyst, told DW.

"It is a contradiction that the authorities keep saying one thing to the international community, but the ground reality depicts a different picture," she said.

"While it is true that political engagement by the international community has given legitimacy to the Taliban, Pakistan ultimately has to bear the brunt of the spillover from Afghanistan."

Qamar Cheema, a political analyst, said pro-Taliban rallies were "a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty."

"At the same time, it also shows support for the Taliban ideology in Pakistani society. The authorities have failed to counter their narrative," he said.

Analyst Kugelman shares a similar view about the support enjoyed by the Taliban in Pakistani society: "Many Pakistanis see the group as a better alternative to President Ashraf Ghani's government, especially because of the perception that it better serves Pakistan's interests in Afghanistan. So, if there are indeed rallies in Pakistan advocating on behalf of the Afghan Taliban, it wouldn't be a surprise."

MILITANT HAQQANI NETWORK - A BRIEF HISTORY

Remnants of the Afghan war against Soviets

The Haqqani Network was formed by Jalaluddin Haqqani, who fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 1995, the Haqqani Network allied with the Taliban and the two groups captured the Afghan capital Kabul in 1996. In 2012, the US designated the group a terrorist organization. On September 4, 2018, the Taliban announced that Jalaluddin passed away after a long illness. PHOTOS 123456789

'Government is watchful'

Political analyst Rahimullah Yusufzai told DW that Pakistanis were unlikely to join Afghan Taliban forces, at least not in large numbers as they did during the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

"The situation is much different now because the government is watchful. It will not allow people to cross over into Afghanistan and fight for the Taliban," Yusufzai said.

"However, in remote areas close to the Afghan border, people might still go to fight and collect donations," he said, adding that some Afghan students studying in Pakistani seminaries might support the Taliban and head to Afghanistan.

"They can see the victory of the Taliban and the situation is in their favor," he said.

Peshawar-based analyst Samina Afridi believes that support for the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan's so-called tribal belt has dwindled.

"There are pockets of support for the Afghan Taliban in North and South Waziristan, but most of the people in other parts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province want schools, hospitals, roads and infrastructure, not any militancy, be it from the Afghan Taliban or any other group," she told DW.

Afridi said clerics sympathetic to the Afghan Taliban might begin recruitment or collect donations but that such actions would be "vehemently" resisted by anti-war grassroots organizations like the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement.

Additional reporting by S. Khan, DW's correspondent in Islamabad.

PAKISTAN: HOW ISLAMIST MILITANCY WRECKED A TRIBAL WOMAN'S LIFE

A hard life

Life is hard for Pakistan's tribal women. For Baswaliha, a 55-year-old widow, life became even more painful after she lost her son in 2009, and her husband in 2010 — both in terrorist attacks. Baswaliha lives in Galanai, a town in the tribal Mohmand district that shares a border with Afghanistan. The area was hit hard by the Taliban insurgency following the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan. PHOTOS 1234567

THE HAQQANI NETWORK: THE NEW KINGMAKERS IN KABUL
JEFF M. SMITH
NOVEMBER 12, 2021
COMMENTARY


LONG READ 

In some ways, the Taliban that is now in power in Kabul looks a great deal like the Taliban that ruled Afghanistan in the run-up to 9/11. In their first weeks in office, the Taliban whipped women in public, tortured journalists, targeted minorities, executed former collaborators with the United States, and canceled female sports and secondary education.

In other ways, the Taliban, and its new leadership, looks very different. The recent focus on the Taliban’s human rights violations and the group’s escalating battle with the Islamic State in Afghanistan risks overshadowing a potentially bigger story: the bloodstained rise of Sirajuddin Haqqani and the Haqqani Network. A loyal proxy of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the network has been active in Afghanistan since the 1970s. Through brutal tactics and battlefield successes, the Haqqani Network — a terrorist group allied with, and increasingly embedded in, the Taliban leadership structure — has now established itself as a dangerous and influential kingmaker in Kabul.

Throughout the course of the Afghan War, the Haqqani Network was often responsible for the deadliest and highest-profile terrorist attacks on U.S. forces. It may be no coincidence that Khalil ur-Rahman Haqqani, a terrorist with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, was appointed to serve as the head of security in the Afghan capital one week before an August 2021 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. soldiers and over 160 Afghan civilians. The fox was finally guarding the henhouse.

When the Taliban announced a new hardline government in September, several members of the Haqqani Network were given key ministerial positions, handing the terrorist group control of internal security in Afghanistan. It increasingly seems that the fall of Kabul was as much a victory for the Haqqani Network as it was for the traditional Taliban leadership. Indeed, within days of announcing the new government, senior Haqqani commanders engaged in a fistfight with a key Taliban leader, sending him fleeing from the capital to traditional Taliban strongholds in the south.

The ascendence of the Haqqanis has also been a victory for Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies. As longtime Afghanistan scholar Barnett Rubin notes, today “Pakistan’s favored Taliban, the Haqqanis, dominate. Taliban leaders who sought to gain some independence from Pakistan or to seek a negotiated solution have been marginalized.”

A Taliban-ruled Afghanistan was already a nightmare scenario. The Haqqani Network, with its “track record of supporting overseas jihad,” is even more ideologically and operationally aligned with global jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Afghanistan than the Taliban is. The Biden administration recently warned that both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Afghanistan are intent on conducting terrorist attacks on the United States, and the latter could generate that capability in as soon as six months.

With limited access to Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the Biden administration should begin preparing for the worst — for the possibility that globally ambitious terrorist groups find either direct support or a more permissive environment to operate by an Afghan government heavily influenced by the Haqqani Network. It should lead international efforts to pressure the new Taliban-Haqqani government to abandon support for global terrorist groups, and it should seek to re-establish counter-terrorism capabilities in the country and broader region. Critically, it should do so while avoiding falling into a Faustian bargain with Pakistan, exchanging access to Afghanistan for acceptance of Pakistan’s support to the very same terrorist groups the United States is targeting.

Haqqani’s Aces

The origins of the Haqqani Network date back to a 1973 coup in Afghanistan that brought to power Prime Minister Daoud Khan. When Khan offered “shelter, training, and weapons to Baloch insurgents and Pakistani Pashtun nationalists alike,” Pakistani intelligence began mobilizing exiled Afghan dissidents like Jalaluddin Haqqani for “anti-regime operations.” From their base in Pakistan’s tribal areas, in 1975, Haqqani’s fighters launched their first attack in Afghanistan, killing 12.

After the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistani intelligence re-activated various Afghan mujahideen proxies, with Haqqani and his allies receiving an “extraordinary share” of the arms and aid. Pakistan accepted arms and aid from the United States and Saudi Arabia for the anti-Soviet jihad, even as Pakistani intelligence “controlled their distribution and their transport to the war zone,” while limiting contact between the CIA and the mujahideen. Nevertheless, CIA officers, who observed that Jalaluddin “could kill Russians like you wouldn’t believe,” idolized him.

Jalaluddin’s tribal connections, fundraising skills, and fluency in Arabic were key assets in his ascension. Haqqani’s Zadran tribe straddles the Afghan-Pakistani border where Loya Paktia meets Waziristan. The border crossings under its control provided the network leverage over the flow of drugs, trade, and fighters coming across the porous border, with additional revenue earned from smuggling, kidnapping, and extortion.

Jalaluddin further distinguished himself by drawing Gulf money and Arab fighters to the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad, even taking an Arab wife from the United Arab Emirates with which he had a son, Sirajuddin. According to Steve Coll, the “Haqqanis did more than any other commander network in Afghanistan to nurture and support Arab volunteer fighters, seeding al-Qaeda’s birth.” Indeed, al-Qaeda’s first training camp was established in Haqqani territory, though at the time Haqqani did not espouse a global jihadist ideology.

After the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, Afghanistan was consumed by civil war. In the chaos, a movement of ultra-conservative Pashtun religious students (“Talibs”) arose seemingly out of thin air, vowing to end corrupt warlordism and implement strict Islamic law in Afghanistan. After a string of battlefield victories, in late 1994, Pakistan “threw its support behind the emerging Taliban movement” led by Mullah Omar. Initially opposed to the group, in 1995, Jalaluddin “defected” to the Taliban while maintaining his own power base in Loya Paktia. The following year, the Taliban seized control of Kabul and effectively ended the Afghan civil war. Jalaluddin was later appointed Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs in the Taliban government that ruled from 1996 to 2001.

After the 9/11 attack and U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, U.S.-allied forces cornered key Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders, as well as Pakistani army officers and intelligence advisers, along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. As Pakistan arranged an airlift to ferry these groups to its tribal areas, the Haqqani Network reportedly “served as [a] key conduit for the escape of al-Qaeda operatives into Pakistan.”

The Rise of Siraj

From his sanctuary in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Jalaluddin “began to remobilize his front, and [by late 2002] Haqqani fighting groups were operating in Paktia and Khost” in eastern Afghanistan. In 2003, the Taliban formed new regional leadership councils or “shuras.” The quasi-autonomous “Miram Shah shura,” headquartered in North Waziristan, was “composed exclusively of the Haqqani Network.”

Meanwhile, Sirajuddin (“Siraj”) began assuming operational control of the Haqqani Network from his aging father. By mid-2005, he was “spearheading the insurgency in Loya Paktia,” eventually overseeing an expansion of the network’s operations and stretching a campaign of terror to the Afghan capital.

Inside Pakistan, Siraj was making the Haqqani Network increasingly indispensable to Pakistani intelligence. In the mid-2000s, militant groups in the Haqqani stronghold of North Waziristan began turning their guns inward, targeting the Pakistani state and civilians, eventually coalescing under the banner of a new Pakistani Taliban in 2007. Pakistani intelligence leaned on the Haqqani Network to broker a series of peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban. Siraj used his connections to “pressure them to cease attacking [Pakistan’s] security forces — and attack Afghan and Western forces in Afghanistan instead.”

In 2007, the Haqqani Network became “officially affiliated” with the Taliban. Siraj was granted membership to the Taliban Leadership Council and was later appointed head of the Miram Shah Shura.

U.S. military officials began warning that the Haqqani Network were “becoming more violent and self-serving” under Siraj, who was part of a “younger, more aggressive generation” usurping power from traditional Zadran tribal elders. The Haqqani Network was the first among all Taliban factions to embrace suicide bombing tactics and is believed to have played a role in the July 2008 suicide bombing at the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed over 50 people, as well as the December 2009 suicide bombing of a CIA outpost in Khost.

In 2011, the Haqqani Network orchestrated a suicide bombing at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul, wounded 77 U.S. soldiers in an attack on a U.S. military base, and assaulted the U.S. embassy in Kabul. The same year, Siraj published a violent manifesto advocating for global jihad outside Afghanistan’s borders, a departure from his father’s more traditional focus on eastern Afghanistan. It urged Muslims to travel to the West on student visas and attack soft targets, praising al-Qaeda and promoting suicide bombings and beheadings.

The Haqqani Network had by now positioned itself in the crosshairs of the United States, which began heavily targeting the group in Loya Paktia and, through drone strikes, in North Waziristan. However, Pakistani intelligence would reportedly “warn Siraj of an impending drone strike, after which he would seek shelter in the mountains surrounding Miram Shah,” limiting the United States’ ability to degrade the network’s capabilities in its Pakistani safe havens.

Frustrated U.S. officials began publicly and privately pressuring Islamabad to cut all ties with the network. In 2011, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen described the Haqqani Network as a “veritable arm” of Pakistani intelligence. In 2012, the same year Siraj officially assumed control of the network from Jalaluddin, the U.S. State Department designated the group a terrorist organization.

Pakistan ostensibly “banned” the Haqqani Network in 2015. However, the following year Senator Bob Corker vented about how the group had simply moved from Pakistan’s tribal areas, where they were being targeted by U.S. drones, to Pakistan’s suburbs, where they were receiving protection and medical care.

Haqqani and the Taliban

When the Afghan government fell in August 2021, it should have been cause for a joint celebration by Taliban and Haqqani leaders. After all, Siraj had been named deputy emir of the Taliban in 2015 and, to the outside world, the Taliban and Haqqani Network appeared increasingly indistinguishable. Yet, within days of forming a new government, Haqqani and Taliban leaders were reportedly involved in a power-sharing struggle that descended into violence, sending a key Taliban leader fleeing the capital.

While the Haqqani Network is generally billed as an “autonomous but integral” part of the Taliban hierarchy, it has always maintained “distinct command and control, and lines of operations.” In 2010, U.S. assessments concluded Siraj “operates independently, choosing his own targets and only loosely coordinating with the Taliban’s supreme leadership.”

The Taliban is perhaps best seen as a conglomeration of roughly aligned Pashtun tribes of which the Haqqani Network is a part. However, the traditional Afghan Taliban leadership and the Haqqani Network are separated by geography and identity. Among others, legacy Taliban leaders like the late Mullah Omar, his son Mullah Yaqoob, and current Afghan deputy prime minister Mullah Baradar hail from the greater Kandahar region in southern Afghanistan. The Haqqani’s Zadran tribe lies to the more mountainous northeast.

According to Jeffrey Dressler, the Haqqani stronghold of Loya Paktia was “an area in which the southern Taliban were never able to gain influence because of a history of strong tribal independence and a fierce aversion to outsiders.” The Haqqani Network and the eastern Zadran tribes have historically resisted centralized authority, operating autonomously despite periods of intimate cooperation with the southern Taliban factions.

The announcement of Mullah Omar’s death in 2015 further propelled Siraj’s rise while exacerbating fissures between the Haqqani Network and the Taliban’s Kandahari leaders. Siraj was named deputy emir of the Taliban under Omar’s immediate successor, Mullah Mansour. When the latter was killed in a drone strike in 2016, a religious scholar, Haibatullah Akhundzada, was named the Taliban’s new emir. By one account, Akhundzada “intentionally split operational control of the Taliban’s military forces between [his two deputies] Haqqani and Yaqoob in order to prevent the two from creating potentially powerful breakaway factions.”

With Mullah Omar out of the picture, Siraj reportedly enjoyed final authority over the appointment of Taliban shadow governors while “Akhundzada’s relative lack of battlefield experience meant Sirajuddin had almost total autonomy over military strategy and operations.” By 2016, scholars observed that the “pre-eminence of Sirajuddin’s voice amongst the Taliban elite is palpable — so much so that certain critics have pointed to a ‘Haqqanization’ of the Taliban.”

When Kabul fell amid a chaotic U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, Haqqani leaders and Taliban Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Baradar sparred over the allocation of ministerial posts and who deserved credit for the Taliban’s victory: Baradar’s political negotiations with the United States in Doha or the Haqqani Network’s brutal battlefield tactics. The dispute was serious enough that Pakistan’s intelligence chief flew to Kabul to oversee negotiations. (There is a rumor that the Taliban’s reclusive Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhunzada was killed in Pakistan in 2020, but that is unconfirmed. The Taliban, for its part, claimed he made a public appearance last month.)

Four Haqqani leaders were ultimately given ministerial positions in the new Taliban government: Khalil (refugees minister); Najibullah (communications minister); Abdul Baqi (minister of education); and Siraj (interior minister). As head of the Interior Ministry, Siraj oversees internal security and the power to issue passports. He also secured the right to nominate governors for several eastern Afghan provinces.

Within days of forming the new government, Haqqani leaders and Baradar reportedly engaged in a fistfight, which sent Baradar and Mullah Yaqoob fleeing to Kandahar. Baradar later released what some said looked like a “hostage” video claiming the two sides had settled their differences. By October, he had returned to Kabul, apparently refusing a security detail from the Haqqani-led interior ministry.

Pakistan and the Haqqani Network

In this internecine rivalry, Pakistani intelligence has predictably “backed the Haqqanis over Baradar.” The Haqqani Network’s relationship with the Pakistani state is older, deeper, and less contentious than the Taliban’s.

Siraj’s uncle, Khalil Haqqani, reportedly enjoys “recurring” meetings with Pakistan’s army chief and was “a regular visitor to Pakistan’s military headquarters in Rawalpindi.” By contrast, Pakistan arrested Baradar in 2010 for daring to explore early peace talks with the United States. “We picked up Baradar and others because they were trying to make a deal without us,” a Pakistani security official told the New York Times that year.

The Taliban’s relationship with Pakistani intelligence has been characterized by tactical cooperation and mutual dependency but also substantial mistrust. Strains of Pashtun nationalism within the Taliban’s ranks make Pakistan uncomfortable. As a result, Pakistani intelligence has sought to make itself indispensable to the group while populating it with more loyal operatives and factions, including the Haqqani Network. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, it categorically refused to recognize the Durand Line, the de facto Afghan-Pakistani border created by the British Raj in 1893 that divides the nearly 60 million Pashtuns in both countries. Mullah Omar is said to have grown irate with his Pakistani counterparts when the issue was raised. Since taking power last month, the Taliban has again withheld recognition of the Durand Line, complaining about Pakistan’s efforts to fence the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Notably, the Taliban has also rebuffed requests by Pakistan to pressure the Pakistani Taliban to cease attacks inside the country. “The issue of the [Pakistani Taliban] is one that Pakistan will have to deal with, not Afghanistan,” a Taliban spokesman explained in August. Since the fall of Kabul, the Pakistani Taliban has launched an escalating campaign of terror inside Pakistan from its base in North Waziristan. Initial Pakistani government efforts to secure a truce with the group failed, but a tentative peace agreement was reportedly reached in mid-November. The Pakistani government claimed the Afghan Taliban helped serve as a mediator in the peace talks but a Taliban spokesman denied the claim: “we have not been involved in such talks, nor are we aware of it.” As in the past, Islamabad is likely leaning on the Haqqani Network to serve as an interlocutor with the Pakistani Taliban and other restive militant groups in its tribal areas.

The Haqqanis and the Islamic State in Afghanistan

The Haqqani Network’s relationship with the Islamic State in Afghanistan is a hotly debated topic. Abdul Sayed and Colin Clarke recently argued that, while there are connections between the groups at lower ranks, “there is scant evidence of a more robust relationship or anything resembling organizational support.” However, other analysts have found evidence of significant operational links among the terrorist groups.

The shadowy regional offshoot of the Islamic State has become a point of concern for the international community since emerging in the region in 2017 and claiming responsibility for the deadly suicide bombing at the Kabul airport this August. Initially comprised of disaffected former members of the Pakistani Taliban driven out of North Waziristan by a Pakistani military offensive, the Islamic State in Afghanistan first established a base in eastern Afghanistan. From there it engaged in an increasingly bloody turf war with the Taliban, fighting over territory and recruits.

After a series of battlefield defeats at the hands of the Taliban and U.S. forces from 2017 to 2020, the regional affiliate of the Islamic State began reinventing itself. In 2020, the group appointed a former “midlevel Haqqani commander” as its new leader. A 2020 U.N. report noted “most attacks claimed by [the Islamic State in Afghanistan] demonstrated some degree of ‘involvement, facilitation, or the provision of technical assistance’ by the Haqqani Network.” In May 2020, the Afghan government busted a “joint cell” of Haqqani Network and Islamic State fighters. Reports that year suggested Pakistani intelligence was pushing the Haqqani Network to establish closer links to the group in order to “maintain plausible deniability in future terror attacks.”

Scholar Theo Farrell contends “the Haqqanis have the deepest links with [the Islamic State] of any faction within the Taliban,” noting that the Haqqani Network “sent hundreds of fighters to support [its] struggle in Iraq and Syria. Many of these ‘foreign fighters’ returned home to join [the group].”

Nevertheless, the Islamic State’s turf war with the Taliban has intensified since the fall of Kabul. The former has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks across the country in recent weeks, including a funeral ceremony attended by senior Taliban figures and an attack on a Shi’ite mosque that killed over 70. According to a Lowy Institute report, these attacks are meant to distinguish [the Islamic State in Afghanistan’s] brand from the Taliban’s, cast doubt on the Taliban’s ability to govern and provide security, and signal their own resolve to various audiences—all of which can ultimately increase terrorist organizations’ longevity and serve as a recruiting tool. [It] also uses these attacks to paint its long-time Taliban rival as illegitimate collaborators with the West, incapable of delivering security to the Afghan people.

The Haqqanis and Al-Qaeda

Finally, the Taliban and Haqqani Network both continue to maintain robust links to al-Qaeda. According to a 2021 U.N. report, the Haqqani Network “remains a hub for outreach and cooperation with regional foreign terrorist groups and is the primary liaison between the Taliban and Al-Qaida.”

Khalil Haqqani is “known to American intelligence as the Taliban emissary to Al Qaeda.” Stanford’s “Mapping Militant Organizations” explains that Khalil “has acted on behalf of Al Qaeda and facilitated its terrorist operations” and “organized the detention of enemy prisoners captured by [the Haqqani Network] and Al Qaeda.” Experts believe al-Qaeda and the Haqqani Network are today “intertwined, and it is highly unlikely they will cut ties.”

Last year, the U.S. Treasury Department concluded that, “as of 2020, al-Qaeda is gaining strength in Afghanistan while continuing to operate with the Taliban … Senior Haqqani Network figures have discussed forming a new joint unit of armed fighters in cooperation with and funded by al-Qaeda.”

Looking Ahead

America’s counter-terrorism options in Afghanistan, like its access to the landlocked country, are limited. The Biden administration could opt to take a hands-off approach, maintaining a modest over-the-horizon strike capability. Perhaps it believes predictable governance challenges, internal infighting, and fear of U.S. retaliation will mitigate the risk that Afghanistan will again be a platform for terrorist attacks against America or its interests and allies abroad. Perhaps in their desire for international recognition and aid, more pragmatic Taliban leaders intend to uphold their pledge to prevent terrorists from using Afghan soil to launch such attacks.

However, it is far from clear the Taliban has either the intent or the ability to enforce their commitments. In any event, it is the Haqqani Network — not the Taliban’s Doha negotiators — that is increasingly pulling the strings in Kabul.

Under Jalaluddin, the Haqqani Network was historically unconcerned with global jihad, confining its operations to Afghanistan. But this is a different Haqqani Network under new management. One that pioneered suicide bombing in Afghanistan. One that sent several hundred fighters to the Middle East to support the Islamic State’s efforts in Iraq and Syria. One that published a global jihadist manifesto. One that has refined a “signature brand of urban terrorist attacks and cultivated a sophisticated international fund-raising network.” One that maintains operational ties to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, as well as to India-focused Pakistani militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba. One that has developed a knack for hostage-taking in recent years, among them several American citizens. One that honors the families of notorious suicide bombers, doling out cash rewards and promising more attacks to come. One that just assumed key levers of power in a new government and whose ultimate intentions and capabilities are simply unclear at this point.

At the very least, the United States should prepare for the possibility that globally ambitious terrorist groups find either direct support or a more permissive environment in which to operate by an Afghan government heavily influenced by the Haqqani Network. “[The Islamic State in Afghanistan] and al Qaeda have the intent to conduct external operations including against the U.S.,” Under Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl testified in October 2021. “We could see [the Islamic State in Afghanistan] generate that capability in somewhere between six to twelve months … al Qaeda would take a year or two.”

To enhance its counter-terrorism reach into Afghanistan the Biden administration is reportedly exploring options for basing and overflight arrangements with neighboring countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. However, domestic resistance and Russian opposition make these unlikely prospects.

The Biden administration thus confronts the same tragic dilemma that has haunted U.S. policy in Afghanistan for 20 years: Fighting terrorists in the landlocked country requires cooperation with one of its neighbors. Since cooperation with Iran, China, and Russia is impractical, the only alternative is Pakistan, the key patron of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network for decades. In late October, CNN reported the Biden administration was in negotiations with Pakistan to use the country’s airspace for counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan “in exchange for assistance with [Pakistan’s] own counter-terrorism efforts and help in managing the relationship with India.”

While the Biden administration is unlikely to alter America’s burgeoning strategic partnership with India, it might consider an extension of the same Faustian bargain from the Afghan War: provide aid to Pakistan and tacitly accept its “double game” in exchange for U.S. access to Afghanistan. Such an arrangement risks trading short-term relief for long-term pain. Acceptance of Pakistan’s double game is arguably what got the United States in this position in the first place.

Breaking the cycle won’t be easy. Pakistan has skillfully leveraged Afghanistan’s cruel geography to position itself as indispensable to the United States. But U.S. policymakers have consistently failed to appreciate that Pakistan has far more to lose from an openly adversarial relationship with the United States than vice versa.

Over the past 20 years, Pakistan has squandered the substantial goodwill it once enjoyed in Washington. The frustration on Capitol Hill is palpable. U.S. lawmakers recently introduced a bill in the Senate under which “the US president will have the power to impose sanctions on individuals who provide military, training or logistical support to the Taliban or provide safe haven to their fighters.” It would open the door to a range of targeted sanctions on Pakistani military and civilian officials. Others have called for Pakistan to be listed by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. The U.S. also has substantial means to apply pressure via numerous international fora, including the Financial Action Task Force, an international terrorism financing watchdog.

Pakistan stonewalling the United States on counter-terrorism cooperation in Afghanistan would remove any remaining leverage and any remaining guardrails preventing the relationship from a vicious cycle of hostility and recriminations. By necessity, the Biden administration may seek a new aid-for-access arrangement with Islamabad, but the next chapter in Pakistani-U.S. relations can’t look like the last chapter. The foundations of any new pact should carry both carrots and sticks, including the specter of real, biting sanctions if Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies continues supporting the region’s most dangerous terrorist groups.


Jeff M. Smith is a research fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.

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Factbox-Why is Pakistan deporting over a million undocumented Afghan immigrants?

Reuters
Thu, November 2, 2023 

Pakistan gives last warning to undocumented immigrants to leave, in Nowshera


KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's midnight deadline for undocumented foreigners to leave expired on Thursday, as more than 140,000 migrants, mostly Afghans, were estimated to have left voluntarily.

Authorities rounded up people to temporary holding centres a day earlier, ahead of Wednesday's deadline, set a month ago, to leave or face expulsion. Some who have spent decades in Pakistan crammed into trucks queued on the border.

WHY IS PAKISTAN DEPORTING FOREIGNERS?

The sudden expulsion threat came after suicide bombings this year that the government said involved Afghans, though without providing evidence.

Pakistani authorities said Afghan nationals were found to be involved in attacks against the government and the army, including 14 of this year's 24 suicide bombings.

Islamabad has also blamed them for smuggling and other militant attacks as well as petty crimes. Kabul rejects the accusations.

Pakistan has brushed off calls to reconsider its decision from the United Nations, rights groups and Western embassies, who have urged it to incorporate into its plan a way to identify and protect Afghans facing the risk of persecution at home.

HOW MANY FOREIGNERS ARE THERE?

The vast majority of undocumented foreigners in Pakistan are Afghans, and, while authorities have not yet provided official data, only a few would comprise people from Iran and some central Asian countries, among others.

Pakistan is home to more than 4 million Afghan migrants and refugees, about 1.7 million of them undocumented, Islamabad says, although many have lived in Pakistan for their entire lives.

About 600,000 Afghans have crossed into neighbouring Pakistan since the Taliban took over in 2021, joining a large number there since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the ensuing civil wars.

Islamabad says deportation will be orderly, carried out in phases and start with those who have criminal records. Authorities have threatened raids in areas suspected of housing "undocumented foreigners" after Wednesday.

WHAT IS AFGHANISTAN SAYING ABOUT THE DEPORTATION?

Afghanistan's Taliban-run administration has dismissed Pakistan's accusations against Afghan migrants.

It has asked all countries hosting Afghan refugees to give them more time to prepare for repatriation.

"We call on them not to deport forcefully Afghans without preparation, rather give them enough time and countries should use tolerance," the administration said in a social media post on Afghans in Pakistan and elsewhere.

It assured Afghans who have left over political concerns that they could return and live peacefully in the country.

(Reporting by Ariba Shahid in Karachi; Writing by Shivam Patel; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)


Border crossing with Afghanistan swamped by Afghans after Pakistani expulsion order

Mushtaq Ali
Updated Thu, November 2, 2023 

Pakistan gives last warning to undocumented immigrants to leave, in Chaman


By Mushtaq Ali

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) -Thousands of people swamped Pakistan's main northwestern border crossing seeking to cross into Afghanistan on Thursday, a day after the government's deadline expired for undocumented foreigners to leave or face expulsion.

Pakistani authorities began rounding up undocumented foreigners, most of them Afghans, hours before Wednesday's deadline. More than a million Afghans could have to leave or face arrest and forcible expulsion as a result of the ultimatum delivered by the Pakistan government a month ago.

Scrambling to cope with the sudden influx, the Taliban-run administration in Afghanistan said temporary transit camps had been set up, and food and medical assistance would be provided, but relief agencies reported dire conditions across the border.

"The organisations' teams stationed in the areas where people are returning from Pakistan have reported chaotic and desperate scenes among those who have returned," the Norwegian Refugee Council, Danish Refugee Council and International Rescue Committee said in a joint statement.

The Pakistani government has brushed off calls from the United Nations, rights groups and Western embassies to reconsider its expulsion plan, saying Afghans had been involved in Islamist militant attacks and in crime that undermined the security of the country.

BORDER BOTTLENECK

More than 24,000 Afghans crossed the northwestern Torkham crossing into Afghanistan on Wednesday alone, Deputy Commissioner Khyber Tribal District Abdul Nasir Khan said. "There were a large number waiting for clearance and we made extra arrangements to better facilitate the clearance process."

Authorities had worked well into the night at a camp set up near the crossing, he added. The border, at the northwestern end of the Khyber Pass on the road between Peshawar in Pakistan and Jalalabad in Afghanistan, is usually closed by sundown.

Khan said 128,000 Afghans had left through the crossing since the Pakistani government issued its directive.

Others were crossing the border at Chaman, in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan.

Major roads leading to border crossings were jammed with trucks carrying families and whatever belongings they could carry.

Aid agencies estimated the number of arrivals at Torkham had risen from 300 people a day to 9,000-10,000 since last month's expulsion decree.

Some Afghans who have been ordered to leave have spent decades in Pakistan, while some have never even been to Afghanistan, and wonder how they can start a new life there.

Of the more than 4 million Afghans living in Pakistan, the government estimates 1.7 million are undocumented.

Many fled during the decades of armed conflict that Afghanistan suffered since the late 1970s, while the Islamist Taliban's takeover after the withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces in 2021 led to another exodus.

Aid agencies warned that the mass movement of people could tip Afghanistan into yet another crisis and expressed "grave concerns" about the survival and reintegration of the returnees, particularly with the onset of winter.

International humanitarian funding for Afghanistan dried up after the Taliban took over and imposed restrictions on women.

SHORTAGE OF TRANSPORT

Over 1,500 undocumented Afghans were being brought to the southwestern Chaman crossing after being rounded up in police raids in different areas of Pakistan, including the major port Karachi, Balochistan Information Minister Jan Achakzai said.

People crossing from Chaman into Afghanistan's Spin Boldak have run into trouble finding transport to their final destinations, said Ismatullah, a bus service operator.

"A huge number of people are coming from Karachi but face a shortage of buses and trucks," he told Reuters by phone from Spin Boldak. "Obviously in such situations the fares have increased. The (Afghan) government is helping people according to its ability, but it is not enough."

(Reporting by Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar, Gibran Peshimam in Islamabad, Saleem Ahmed in Quetta and Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul; Writing by Asif Shahzad and Gibran Peshimam; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Aid agencies warn of chaotic and desperate scenes among Afghans returning from Pakistan

Associated Press
Updated Thu, November 2, 2023 











1 / 14
A Police officer checks documents of a resident during a search operation against illegal immigrants, at a neighborhood of Karachi, Pakistan, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023. Pakistani security forces have rounded up, detained and deported dozens of Afghans who were living in the country illegally, after a government-set deadline for them to leave expired, authorities said. 

(AP Photo/Fareed Khan)

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Major international aid agencies on Thursday warned of chaotic and desperate scenes among Afghans who have returned from Pakistan, where security forces are detaining and deporting undocumented or unregistered foreigners.

The crackdown on illegal migration mostly affects Afghans because they are the majority of foreigners living in Pakistan, although the government says it is targeting all who are in the country illegally.

Three aid organizations — the Norwegian Refugee Council, Danish Refugee Council and the International Rescue Committee — said many people fleeing the Pakistani crackdown arrived in Afghanistan in poor condition.

“The conditions in which they arrive in Afghanistan are dire, with many having endured arduous journeys spanning several days, exposed to the elements, and often forced to part with their possessions in exchange for transportation,” the agencies said in a statement.

Between 9,000 and 10,000 Afghans are now crossing the border every day from Pakistan. Previously it was around 300 a day, according to agency teams on the ground.

Returning Afghans have nowhere to go and the agencies said they fear for people's survival and reintegration in a country overwhelmed by natural disasters, decades of war, a struggling economy, millions of internally displaced people and a humanitarian crisis.

Salma Ben Aissa, the International Rescue Committee's country director in Afghanistan, said returnees face a bleak future, especially if they lived in Pakistan for decades.

Afghanistan's Taliban authorities say they have prepared temporary camps for Afghans in border areas, providing people with food, shelter, health care and SIM cards.

On Thursday, Pakistan's Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said he assured the Taliban's top diplomat in the country, Ahmad Shakib, that Afghan women and children will be exempt from biometric tests like fingerprinting to facilitate their return.

Bugti told Shakib that Afghans will be treated with the utmost respect and dignity, according to a ministry statement. No action is being taken against those who have been registered as living in Pakistan or have an Afghan citizen card, he added.

Pakistani police are carrying out raids across the country to check foreigners' documents.

Authorities demolished mud-brick homes on the outskirts of the capital of Islamabad earlier this week to force Afghans to leave the area. Household items were buried under rubble after heavy machinery pulled down the makeshift dwellings.

Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghans over the decades, including those who fled their country during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation.


Thousands of Afghans forced to return as Pakistan’s anti-migrant deadline ends

Arpan Rai
Wed, November 1, 2023 

Afghan families wait in Karachi, Pakistan for transport to take them to their homeland (Associated Press)

More than 100,000 undocumented Afghan nationals have left Pakistan and returned to Afghanistan through the northwestern Torkham border crossing as the deadline for anti-migrant crackdown looms.

These hundreds of thousands Afghan nationals travelled from across Pakistan cities to reach the border crossing, deputy commissioner Abdul Nasir Khan said on Wednesday.

The deadline imposed by Pakistan for deportation or forced removal of all undocumented immigrants, including Afghan nationals who had fled the Taliban, expired on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, dozens of Afghans were rounded up, detained and deported after they were found to be allegedly living in Pakistan, authorities said.

“Today, we said goodbye to 64 Afghan nationals as they began their journey back home,” Pakistani interim interior minister Sarfraz Bugti said.

“This action is a testament to Pakistan’s determination to repatriate any individuals residing in the country without proper documentation.”

The crackdown took place in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi, the garrison city of Rawalpindi, and in various areas in the southwestern Baluchistan and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, which border Afghanistan, officials said.

This week saw undocumented Afghans in Pakistan rushing to the country’s border with Afghanistan.

Thousands of Afghan nationals had escaped to Pakistan in the months following the Taliban’s takeover of the country in August 2021. The Afghans had left their home country to escape the militant group’s wrath.

More than two million undocumented Afghans currently live in Pakistan, of which 600,000 had fled after the Taliban’s takeover, according to UN agencies.

Scores of the undocumented immigrants are now staring at the deadline set by the Pakistani government underits new anti-migrant crackdown.

Officials in Islamabad have said undocumented Afghans living in the country will face arrest and deportation after Wednesday.

The crackdown has left the Torkam and Chaman border crossings, in the north and west sides respectively of the countries’ shared border, open beyond their daily 4pm deadline hour to permit those who wish to leave from these points.

Pakistani officials said more than 200,000 Afghans have left the country since the crackdown was launched. The sharp surge was also confirmed by UN agencies.

The deportations will be carried out in a “phased and orderly” manner, Pakistan has claimed.

The move impacts thousands of Afghans waiting in Pakistan for international agencies to clear their asylum applications. Thousands who fled the country after August 2021 are also waiting for relocation to the US under a special refugee programme.

The rules for the US application required them to relocate to a third country to process their cases.

Several embassies of Nato members in Islamabad, along with the UN’s refugee agency, are lobbying with officials in the Pakistan government at the highest levels to seek exemption from deportation for the thousands of Afghans waiting to be resettled to Western countries.

A US diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, explained Washington’s priority was to facilitate the safe and efficient resettlement and relocation of more than 25,000 eligible Afghans in Pakistan.

“We are in the process of sending letters to those individuals that they can share with local authorities to help identify them as individuals in the US pipeline,” the diplomat said.

Pakistan’s crackdown has drawn widespread criticism from UN agencies, rights groups and the Taliban-led administration in Afghanistan.

Officials in the Western embassies and the UN have asked Pakistan for a way to identify and protect thousands of undocumented migrants to prevent them from persecution at the hands of the Taliban.

“We are asking the government to come up with a comprehensive system and... mechanism to manage and register people at immediate risk of persecution if forced to return,” said Qaiser Khan Afridi, the spokesman for the UN refugee agency in Pakistan.

“Because they cannot return, they can’t go back to Afghanistan because their freedom or their life might be at risk.”

It is not immediately clear if Pakistan has agreed to take up the proposals by the UN and other embassies.

The campaign by Pakistan comes amid strained relations between it and the Taliban rulers next door.

Islamabad accuses Kabul of turning a blind eye to Taliban-allied militants who find shelter in Afghanistan from where they go back and forth across the two countries’ shared 2,611km-long border to stage attacks in Pakistan.

The Taliban deny the accusations.

Afghanistan is also one of the most economically poor countries in the world.

It has reeled under successive severe humanitarian crises, particularly for women and girls who are banned by the Taliban from getting an education beyond the sixth grade, and from most public spaces and jobs.

There are also restrictions on media, activists, and civil society organisations.

The country under Taliban’s rule has been hit by drought and earthquakes, with millions fearing the forthcoming winter season.


Afghan refugees fear as Pakistan prepares for deportations

Azizullah Khan & Kelly Ng - in Peshawar and Singapore

BBC
Wed, November 1, 2023 

Refugees arrive in trucks at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border


Thousands of Afghans living in Pakistan have raced to the border to beat a Wednesday deadline for undocumented foreigners to leave the country.

Pakistan says 1.7 million such people must leave by 1 November or face arrest and deportation. Most are Afghans.

Many refugees are terrified, having fled Afghanistan after the Taliban retook control in 2021. Others have been in Pakistan for decades.

The deadline to leave technically expired at midnight on Tuesday.

However Pakistani media report that those who are in transit to leave the country will be allowed to continue their journeys throughout the day.

"Where will we go if we are forced to leave Pakistan?" asked one young woman.

Sadia, who has been studying in Peshawar in north-west Pakistan, said she escaped Afghanistan two years ago for a chance at getting an education, after the Taliban government barred girls and women from school under its harsh version of Islamic law.

"I am studying here in Pakistan and I wish to continue my education here. If we are forced to leave, I will not be able to continue my study in Afghanistan. My parents, my sister and brother are scared about the future," she told BBC Urdu.

Tensions between the countries soared after a spike in cross-border attacks, which Islamabad blames on Afghanistan-based militants.

Afghanistan's Taliban government, who deny providing sanctuary for militants targeting Pakistan, have called the move to deport undocumented Afghans "unacceptable".

Throngs of refugees rushed to the border with Afghanistan on Tuesday - the last day for them to leave or be deported - on trucks overflowing with clothes and furniture.

Close to 200,000 Afghans have returned home as of Monday, Pakistan said. Reports said 20,000 journeyed to the border on Tuesday as time to leave ran out.

Eight in 10 who left said they feared being arrested if they stayed, according to a UN report.

Many of these refugees, who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban retook control of the government, fear that their dreams and livelihoods will be crushed - yet again.

But Pakistan, which has been wrestling with an economic crisis in recent years, is short of patience. In July, the Pakistani rupee saw its sharpest drop against the dollar since October 1998.

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The UN's human rights office urged Pakistani authorities to stop deportations to avoid a "human rights catastrophe".

"We believe many of those facing deportation will be at grave risk of human rights violations if returned to Afghanistan, including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, cruel and other inhuman treatment," said Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman of the UN's human rights office.

The Taliban government have all but broken their earlier promises to give women the right to work and study - the suppression of women's rights under their rule is the harshest in the world,

Girls in Afghanistan are only allowed to attend primary school. They are not allowed in parks, gyms and pools. Beauty salons have been shut and women are required to be dressed in head-to-toe clothing.

Pakistan said unauthorised refugees will be deported if they do not leave the country before 1 Nov

Earlier this year, the Taliban government also burned musical instruments, claiming music "causes moral corruption".

Afghan singer Sohail said he fled the Afghan capital Kabul "with only some clothes" the night the Taliban seized control of the city in August 2021.

"I cannot live as a musician in Afghanistan," said Mr Sohail, whose family of musicians have been trying to make ends meet in Peshawar.

"We are facing a critical time, as we have no other options, the Taliban do not accept music in Afghanistan and we have no other options for livelihoods," he said.

The Taliban government says it has set up a commission to provide basic services, including temporary accommodation and health services, to returning Afghans.

"We assure them that they will return to their country without any worries and adopt a dignified life," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Pakistan has taken in hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees over decades of war. About 1.3 million Afghans are registered as refugees while another 880,000 have received the legal status to remain, according to the UN.

But another 1.7 million people are in the country "illegally", Pakistan's Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said on 3 October, when he announced the expulsion order.

The UN's figures differ - it estimates that there are more than two million undocumented Afghans living in Pakistan, at least 600,000 of whom arrived after the Taliban returned to power.

People protest the deportation of Afghans from Pakistan

Mr Bugti's order came after a spike in violence near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, often involving armed fighters including the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) - often known as the Pakistani Taliban - and the Islamic State militant group.

The minister claimed "14 out of 24" suicide bombings in Pakistan this year were carried out by Afghan nationals.

"There are no two opinions that we are attacked from within Afghanistan and Afghan nationals are involved in attacks on us... We have evidence," he said according to state media reports.

Unauthorised refugees will be deported if they do not leave, Mr Bugti said on Monday. He stressed the crackdown was not aimed at specific nationalities, but acknowledged that those affected are mainly Afghans.

Earlier in September, Pakistan was hit by two suicide bombings which killed at least 57 people. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, with the TTP denying involvement - though Mr Bugti said one of the suicide bombers had been identified as an Afghan national.

Afghan Refugees in Pakistan Return Home Ahead of Mass Deportation Deadline
Storyful
Tue, October 31, 2023



Thousands of Afghans left Pakistan on October 31, ahead of a midnight deadline for undocumented foreigners to leave the country.

More than 1.7 million Afghan refugees who live in Pakistan have been told they must leave by the first of November or they will be arrested and deported, local media reported, citing government officials.

Many fled Afghanistan after the Taliban retook control in 2021, others have been in Pakistan for decades.

This footage published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) was taken the day before the deportation deadline and shows refugees returning home across the border.

Afghan refugee Riaz Khan described the reality for himself and other displaced people, according to an RFE/RL translation.

“We don’t have any place to live [in Afghanistan.] We expect a lot of troubles there. You see the whole situation yourself. Many of those going back don’t have houses to live in and they will face problems,” he said.

In Karachi a holding center was set up to process Afghans for deportation.

In the RFE footage an URDU City Commissioner said those who had a residency of up to five years that had expired and those who had overstayed would be bound to go.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) urged authorities to halt deportations due to fears refugees would be at risk of human rights violations including arrest, detention, torture and other inhumane treatment. Credit: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty via Storyful

Dozens of Afghans who were illegally in Pakistan are detained and deported in nationwide sweeps

MUNIR AHMED and RIAZ KHAN
Updated Wed, November 1, 2023 



















1 / 25
Afghans wait for clearance to depart for their homeland at a deportation camp set up by authorities to facilitate illegal immigrants, in Chaman, a town on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023. Pakistani security forces on Wednesday rounded up, detained and deported dozens of Afghans who were living in the country illegally, after a government-set deadline for them to leave expired, authorities said. 

(AP Photo/Habibullah Achakzai)

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani security forces on Wednesday detained and deported dozens of Afghans who were living in the country illegally, after a government-set deadline for them to leave expired, authorities said.

The sweep is part of a new anti-migrant crackdown that targets all undocumented or unregistered foreigners, according to Islamabad, though it mostly affects some 2 million Afghans in Pakistan without documentation.

The crackdown has drawn widespread criticism from U.N. agencies, rights groups and the Taliban-led administration in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s interim interior minister confirmed that the deportations have begun.

“Today, we said goodbye to 64 Afghan nationals as they began their journey back home,” Sarfraz Bugti wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “This action is a testament to Pakistan’s determination to repatriate any individuals residing in the country without proper documentation.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “very concerned about this forced movement of people” and would like Pakistan “not to go through with this,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.

Sending many Afghans who “are very likely refugees to a country that by most accounts isn’t ready to welcome them back,” and faces a dire humanitarian situation and serious human rights issues, including the Taliban's crackdown on women and girls who are only allowed an elementary education, shouldn't continue, Dujarric said.

The authorities said Wednesday's sweeps took place in the port city of Karachi, the garrison city of Rawalpindi, and in various areas in the southwestern Baluchistan and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, which border Afghanistan.

The crackdown has worried thousands of Afghans in Pakistan waiting for relocation to the United States under a special refugee program since fleeing the Taliban takeover. Under U.S. rules, applicants first had to relocate to a third country — in this case Pakistan — for their cases to be processed. Most of those awaiting relocation had worked for the U.S. government, non-government organizations and media organizations in the years before the Taliban returned to power and they fled fearing persecution at home. The Taliban-led administration later announced an amnesty, encouraging Afghans to come back.

On Tuesday, a U.S. official said Washington’s priority was to facilitate the safe and efficient resettlement and relocation of more than 25,000 eligible Afghans in Pakistan to the U.S.

On Wednesday, three Pakistani officials confirmed that Islamabad received the list of such Afghans, but they said the list “was flawed and contained incomplete information." The officials said the list was subsequently withdrawn by the U.S. officials to review and revise it before sending it again after Pakistan sought more clarity.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak on the record.

There was no immediate response from the U.S. Embassy about it.

On Tuesday, thousands of Afghans had crammed into trucks and buses and headed to the two key border crossings to return home to avoid arrest and forced deportation.

According to the U.N. agencies, there are more than 2 million undocumented Afghans in Pakistan, at least 600,000 of whom fled after the Taliban takeover in 2021.

Human Right Watch on Tuesday accused Pakistan of resorting to “threats, abuse, and detention to coerce Afghan asylum seekers without legal status” to return to Afghanistan. The New York-based watchdog appealed for authorities to drop the deadline and work with the U.N. refugee agency to register those without papers.

In Afghanistan, Zabihullah Mujahid, the main spokesman for the Taliban government expressed concerns over forced expulsion of Afghans, saying that the past 45 years of wars and conflict in Afghanistan had forced millions to migrate.

The Afghan migrants have not created any problems in their host countries, he added. Without naming Pakistan, he urged host countries “to stop forcefully deporting Afghan refugees" and practice "tolerance based on Islamic and neighborly manners.”

Mujahid said that all Afghans who are in exile “due to political concerns” are welcome back and that the Taliban will provide a “secure environment in Afghanistan” for all.

Late Tuesday, a Taliban delegation traveled from the capital of Kabul to eastern Nangarhar province to find solutions for returning Afghans. Ahmad Banwari, the deputy provincial governor, told local media that the authorities are working hard to establish temporary camps.

Afghan returnees with families that have nowhere to go can stay in the camps for a month until they find a place to live, Banwari said.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban-led administration have become strained over the past two years because of stepped-up attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, a separate militant group that is allied with the Afghan Taliban.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, have found safe havens in neighboring Afghanistan, from where they sneak across the volatile border to launch deadly attacks on Pakistani forces.

Since the government deadline was announced on October 3, more than 200,000 Afghans have returned home from Pakistan.

Pakistan has said the deportations would be carried out in a “phased and orderly” manner and those detained during the crackdown would be treated nicely. However, authorities on Tuesday demolished several mudbrick homes of Afghans on the outskirts of Islamabad to force them to leave the country.

___

Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan. Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez in Islamabad and Abdul Sattar in Quetta, Pakistan, contributed to this report.


Hundreds of thousands of Afghan migrants face deportation from Pakistan

Mushtaq Yusufzai and Jennifer Jett and Samra Zulfaqar
Wed, November 1, 2023 

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghan migrants are facing deportation from Pakistan to the Taliban-ruled country that some of them have never even visited.

In a surprise announcement last month, the Pakistani government said it would arrest and deport an estimated 1.7 million unregistered or undocumented foreigners starting Nov. 1. Though Pakistan says the crackdown is not aimed at any particular nationality, most of the foreigners living there are from neighboring Afghanistan.

The United Nations’ human rights office said the move could give rise to a “human rights catastrophe,” as families could be separated and some of those sent back face possible arrest and torture in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials have accused Afghan nationals of being involved in militant attacks, smuggling and other crimes, which the Afghan government denies.

“Regardless of whether they are playing a good or bad role in society, our system has no way of identifying these individuals,” interim Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said in Lahore on Monday.

On Wednesday, dozens of Afghans were already being rounded up and deported after the expiration of an Oct. 31 deadline to leave.

“Today, we said goodbye to 64 Afghan nationals as they began their journey back home,” interim Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti wrote in a post on X, accompanied by video footage. “This action is a testament to Pakistan’s determination to repatriate any individuals residing in the country without proper documentation.”


Fearing arrest, 140,000 Afghans have left the country in recent weeks, according to the Pakistani Interior Ministry. On Tuesday, thousands of vehicles loaded with household goods were moving slowly toward the border in Peshawar, a city in northwest Pakistan.

Many Afghans thought they would never go back and are worried about what will happen when they do.

“Afghanistan is our country, but I was born and raised in Pakistan,” Ilyas Khan, 37, told NBC News. “There is an uncertain future waiting for us in Afghanistan.”

Pakistan says the 1.4 million Afghans registered as refugees will not be affected. Those who are arrested will be sent to one of multiple deportation centers set up around the country, but no one will be mistreated, officials said.

“We will provide them with food, take care of their medical needs, but at the same time we highly recommend voluntary return,” Bugti told reporters last week.

Kakar said those who get deported would not necessarily be barred from Pakistan indefinitely, and that they should get proper visas.

“If they want to come back for educational purposes or business purposes or any other purpose, we will facilitate that process, but we want a regulated process,” he said.

More than 10,000 Afghans living in Pakistan rushed to the borders on October 31, just hours before a deadline for 1.7 million people to leave Pakistan voluntarily or face arrest and deportation.

 (Rizwan Tabassum / AFP via Getty Images)

Afghanistan, which has called Pakistan’s plan “unacceptable” and asked for the deadline to be extended, has set up a high commission to assist forcibly returned Afghan refugees with temporary accommodations and other services.

“We are here to welcome our Afghan brothers and sisters in their motherland,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said. “We will utilize all our resources to facilitate them in their rehabilitation.”

Activists, journalists, artists and people who worked as officials or soldiers for Afghanistan’s former U.S.-backed government are at particular risk, U.N. officials say. So are women and girls, whose rights to education, work and free movement have been rapidly rolled back under the Taliban.

“For an overwhelming majority of them, living and studying in Pakistan may be their only chance of gaining a formal education,” Amnesty International said in a statement Tuesday, calling on the international community to help Pakistan with the cost of hosting Afghan refugees.

More than 100 former U.S. leaders, diplomats and others also objected to the planned deportations of Afghans, thousands of whom fled Taliban rule and have been waiting for more than two years in Pakistan for U.S. visas.

“This decision would only cause chaos and make a bad situation worse,” they wrote in an open letter. “We urge Pakistan to work with us to resettle qualifying individuals in the U.S., not send them back to Afghanistan where they face certain doom.”

There are more than 2 million undocumented Afghans living in Pakistan, according to the U.N., at least 600,000 of whom arrived after the Taliban regained power in August 2021 amid the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces. Others fled while Afghanistan was occupied by the then-Soviet Union from 1979 to 1989 or after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The majority of those more recent arrivals are undocumented, according to Qaiser Khan Afridi, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. If they return to Afghanistan, he said, “there are serious potential threats to their freedom and safety.”

Many also face major financial losses, since the Pakistani government is limiting the amount of cash migrants can take out of the country.

Habib Jan, 24, who works as a cook at a restaurant, said he and his father were both born in Peshawar and had never been to Afghanistan.

“I married a Pakistani woman and had two children with her,” he said. According to Pakistani law, however, a foreign man who marries a citizen isn’t entitled to citizenship, though a woman from another country is eligible if she marries a Pakistani man.

Habib Jan, 24, is working as a cook in Peshawar’s famous restaurant, famous for its delicious rice cooked in meat. He said he and his father were born in Peshawar but had never been to Afghanistan. “I am the only child of my parents. I married a Pakistani woman and had two children from her. We don’t have a single piece of land in Afghanistan and the second major problem is my wife doesn’t want to go to Afghanistan,” he said.

 (Mushtaq Yusufzai / NBC News)More

“We don’t have a single piece of land in Afghanistan, and the second major problem is my wife doesn’t want to go to Afghanistan,” Jan said.

Musafar Khan, who has a business selling fruits and vegetables with his brothers, said neither he nor any of his 11 siblings, all born in Peshawar, have ever been to their family's native village in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province. His family has proper documentation and does not plan to leave Pakistan, he said, but they worry they might be forced to, nonetheless.

“Pakistan is a remarkable country and the people are extremely welcoming and friendly,” Khan, 35, said. “We don’t even have a house in Afghanistan, so where would we be living if sent back?”

He added that his family has always considered Pakistan their home. Even so, he said, they decided to sell their house in case they get deported and need money.

“We have all the relevant documents to stay here, but we sold our house in Peshawar at a throwaway price as anything can happen to us,” Khan said.

Undocumented migrants in Pakistan are being deported as Afghanistan faces widespread hunger that is likely to get worse as winter approaches. The country is also still dealing with the aftermath of a series of earthquakes in October in the province of Herat, in which women and children made up more than 90% of deaths.

Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, which share a border of about 1,600 miles, have increased in the past two years over a surge in attacks on Pakistani security forces by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of harboring Islamist militants from the group, which is separate from the Afghan Taliban but has a similar ideology.

Days before Pakistan announced the deportations, suicide bombings at two mosques in provinces bordering Afghanistan killed about 60 people. The TTP denied it was responsible.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com