Repatriated Afghans complain about harassment by Pakistani police

Afghan refugees repatriated back to Afghanistan complain about Pakistani police harassment and abuse.

Kabul – Islamabad political relations do affect Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Both Afghan and Pakistani governments should register nearly one million unregistered Afghans in Pakistan and extend their stay by 2017, but the relations between Kabul and Islamabad have put the process in a vague.

President Ashraf Ghani promised donor countries at the Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) in Kabul to address the problem of Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan soon.

“We have a comprehensive plan to deal with the immigrants issues who is willing to return, honorably, and voluntarily to Afghanistan, our commitment is to eliminate the word ‘internal displaced’ from our political glossary,” Ghani said on Saturday.

According to the reports about 137,000 refugees have returned back to their homeland since January 2015.

The repatriated Afghans who have returned to the country worry about insecurity, unemployment and lack of housing.

“We are displaced, we don’t have a place to live and we don’t know what to do to feed ourself, I ask the government to provide a job for us,” Rahim Khan a repatriated Afghan said.

This year the numbers of Afghan refugees returned back from Pakistan have increased to fourfold; If Afghanistan and Pakistan fail to extend their stay in Pakistan for another two years the number may tremendously increase.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNAMA) says they pay an amount of $200, drugs and other informative materials to Afghan refugees who return voluntarily.

“We provide them with mine awareness programs, we vaccine their children, we provide them with medicines and also give them a financial aid of $200 to each person,” Ahmad Fahim a UNAMA Official in Kabul said.

On August 2015, a tripartite session was held in Kabul between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the UNAMA to start the documentation process of unregistered Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s minister for States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) Abdul Qadir Baloch who was in the meeting to represent Pakistan promised to help Afghans “return to their own country in dignity and honor voluntarily as soon as possible”.

Nearly three million Afghan refugees are still living in Pakistan and according to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) Pakistan is hosting almost 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees and also hosts around one million un-registered Afghans.

Reported by: Fahim Noori