After the deportation of foreigners living illegally in Pakistan, the registered refugees are going to face the same fate as the government plans to send them back to their country as its ties with Afghanistan have deteriorated due to rising terrorism.
Balochistan’s caretaker Minister for Information Jan Achakzai said Thursday that the registered refugees will also be repatriated after the completion of a crackdown on illegal settlers.
“So far, 80,000 immigrants from Balochistan have left Pakistan. After this, [we] will send back the registered refugees as well,” he said.
The minister said that the foreigners living in Pakistan should have the authentic documents.
Hundreds of thousands of foreigners have got fake identification cards, he added.
“We have not taken the responsibility of the illegal residents. The crackdown on the illegal migrants will continue,” Achakzai said, while warning the government in Afghanistan against giving harsh statements. “Pakistan knows how to crush all kinds of terrorism.”
The minister said that Pakistan’s relations with the neighbouring country have nosedived recently, but at the same time he noted that the deterioration in the relationship came as the nation was picking up the dead bodies.
Referring to an intelligence-based operation in the Sambaza area of Balochistan’s Zhob district on October 31, in which six terrorists were killed, he said all of them were Afghans.
Quoting caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, Achakzai said that the stats from the last two years — since the interim Taliban government took over Afghanistan — suggest a 500% rise in suicide bombings in Pakistan and a 60% rise in all over terrorist incidents.
He also mentioned the trading of illegal American arms in Afghanistan’s black market as a “national security threat”, saying that the same illegal arms were also used in the attack on the PAF base in Mianwali.
He said that the handful of terrorists present in the Afghan sanctuaries are using US arms against our people.
Coming down hard on the Afghan government, Achakzai said that all of the sanctuaries and terrorist training centres are operating under the Afghan authorities’ noses.
“When you talk on the rhetoric level that our soil is not being used. It is a fact that Afghan soil is being used against us,” he asserted.
The minister said that Pakistan has been hosting Afghans for the last 40 years but now it is expelling them today, so no one should have any problem with this.
“We expect Afghanistan to do the same and send back the Pakistanis living there illegally,” he added.
He said that the country has to assert its sovereign right, which is making sure that any migrant living in Pakistan is documented.
“And if we want to send anyone back, we are not supposed to take the consent from their [country’s] foreign offices for doing so. It is our sovereign decision that Pakistan has taken as a state,” he said.
Responding to a question, Achakzai said that the Afghan government doesn’t even have a plan B for this issue so it is their problem how they deal with the deportation.
The minister went on to say that 800 people are fleeing every other day. Around a thousand migrants have been sent back after taking them in custody from Balochistan, he added.
Achakzai then lauded the Sindh government for cooperating with the Balochistan government in the action.
He further stated that the provincial government is deporting 10,000 undocumented Afghans through the Chaman border on a daily basis.
He also told the media that 100,000 fake identity cards have been blocked from two regions of Balochistan. The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) is swiftly working to block such cards, he added. __The News
