A week before the deadline for illegal migrants expires on October 31, long queues of vehicles loaded with pretty ordinary household items are seen lined up at the Torkham border crossing in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Chaman border crossing in southwestern Balochistan, the two provinces of Pakistan with over 2,670 kilometers (1,659 miles) long border with Afghanistan.
This forced deportation of Afghans continued on November 1, along with a simultaneous crackdown by Pakistani law enforcement on illegal migrants in various cities, which many international organizations see as infringing human rights and the rights of migrants under international law.
The suffering and misery of ordinary Afghans, which began with the former Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, is far from over, with the latest phase beginning with the decision of Pakistan’s interim government to expel all illegal immigrants from the country, for an array of reasons including combating terrorism and cross-border smuggling, particularly of US dollars from Pakistan to Afghanistan.
This exercise, however, appears to be futile, as expelling 1.7 million illegal Afghans from the country is a task that has even been failed by Western countries, which have been dealing with the same issue of illegal migrations for years, and it has been exacerbated due to economic meltdown in several developing countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The West and several other nations concerned about the situation in Afghanistan believed that Pakistan had some degree of influence over the Afghan Taliban and that with their return to power after nearly 20 years, Pakistan’s role would be utilized as a go-between for many countries wanting to reach out to the Afghan Taliban over multiple problems related to gender discrimination as well as terrorism, but all proved erroneous.
Though their bilateral relations soared with the creation of Pakistan in 1947, whose membership in the UN was vehemently opposed by Afghanistan, the intensity was not as strong as people used to commute freely by public transport between Peshawar and Kabul as well as Quetta and Kandahar until the 1970s, owing to not only their cultural, linguistic, and traditional bonds but inter-marriages of the Pashtoons, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group and the second largest in Pakistan.
The ups and downs in bilateral relations continued due to changes in the two countries governments and policies, but the unfortunate aspect is that it still continues, with Pakistan using the refugee issue for political purposes, while the current interim Taliban setup has the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a conglomerate of several Pakistani terrorist organizations, militants, and their families, on their soil.
The Taliban government has appeared divided on the issue of relations with Pakistan, which has hosted Taliban members and their families for over a decade since regaining power in August 2021.
The major group led by the current Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, and Mullah Yaqoob Akhundzada, the current interim defense minister and son of the movement’s first supreme leader, Mullah Omar, who remained in Afghanistan and never visited Pakistan during their fight against the US and its allies, including the governments of Ashraf Ghani and Hamid Karzai. They reportedly never established direct relations with Islamabad in the past, and they are among those who do not trust Pakistan due to its frequent policy shifts toward Afghanistan.
That stance can be seen in the main Taliban leadership’s refusal to accept Pakistani aid for victims of earthquakes in western Herat province last month.
The other group is led by Mullah Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the Haqqani network during the Taliban’s fight against foreign forces, who is currently serving as interim interior minister and leading the Taliban’s terrifying Badri 313 military brigade, and has support for Pakistan due to his and his family members’ long stay in North Waziristan tribal district’s Datakhel area, where he was running his madrassa or Islamic seminary.
Members of the Taliban Qatar office, including several in the interim Taliban administration, are neutral in their relations with Pakistan.
So, with Pakistan’s recent and abrupt decision to deport illegal Afghans by force, the two countries’ relations are likely to soar, which has already begun with condemnation statements from some Taliban leadership, including Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban’s interim government in Kabul, has spoken out against the expulsion of Afghans from Pakistan, calling it “unacceptable.”
In a statement, he urged the Pakistani government to reconsider its decision. Amnesty International and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have also expressed concern about this decision, arguing that an attempt is being made to instill fear among refugees.
The Taliban social media star General Mobeen, who is the most sought-after analyst for various Afghan broadcasts, openly blames Pakistan for its failure on various fronts, including the economic one.
The latest Pakistan decision can be linked to the economic one, as several Pakistan media outlets, as well as social media, highlighted the Afghan Taliban government’s achievements in only two years, with some netizens openly comparing how the sincerity of the rulers can take a country up, blaming Pakistan leaderships for lacking that sincerity to uplift the people’s lives.
According to the IMF, inflation in Afghanistan is negative 1%, while inflation in Pakistan is over 29%. Unemployment in Afghanistan is over 13%, and in Pakistan, it is over 17%, with the US dollar worth 73.44 Afghanis and 281.07 Pakistani rupees.
According to Bloomberg, billions of dollars in humanitarian aid and increased trade with Asian countries have propelled the Afghan currency to the top of the world rankings this quarter, a rare accomplishment for the impoverished country.
Pakistan, whose economy has been in shambles for nearly two years, has 35.7% of its population living below the poverty line out of approximately 240 million people, while Afghanistan has 49.4% of its population living below the poverty line with approximately 41.5 people.
However, Islamabad cited cross-border terrorism in the country carried out not only by the TTP but also by Afghan terrorists, as a major reason for the decision to return illegal Afghans to their home country, citing 14 out of 24 suicide bombings in Pakistan in the last few months carried out by Afghans. However, linking ordinary Afghans with terrorism cannot be justified, and the coming days and months will bring to light what Islamabad is using to justify the forced deportation of refugees.
Shafique Ahmed is Islamabad-based Pakistani journalist associated with an international media organization.
shafiqstatesman@hotmail.com