As the deadline to leave or face expulsion approached, officials revealed that the majority of the 140,000 undocumented immigrants departing Pakistan were Afghans returning to their Taliban-governed homeland, they announced on Wednesday.
Pakistan announced that it will initiate a process to locate and deport individuals falling into this category, following the October deadline it set to start the expulsion of all undocumented immigrants, which includes hundreds of thousands of Afghans.
In more recent times, following the Taliban’s resurgence in 2021, Pakistani authorities report that approximately 600,000 to 800,000 Afghans have moved to Pakistan.
Afghan individuals take a break after salvaging valuable belongings from their mud homes, which were dismantled by authorities during an operation targeting an unauthorized settlement and immigrant population on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan.
Afghans gather their possessions and load them into a vehicle after recovering them from their mud homes, which were razed by authorities in a crackdown on an illicit settlement and immigrant community on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan.
Beside their family’s recovered belongings from their mud houses, Afghan children sit, as these homes were dismantled by authorities during an operation targeting an unauthorised settlement and immigrant population. According to the Pakistani government, nearly 1.7 million of these Afghans lack proper documentation.
The deportation orders were issued amid a significant increase in armed assaults within Pakistan, which the government attributes to groups and individuals based in Afghanistan, a claim that the Afghan Taliban refutes.
In Chaman, a town situated on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Afghans await approval to leave for their home country at a deportation center established by authorities to assist undocumented immigrants.
