“First of all, you must remember, we are strongly against forceful repatriation of refugees,” Muhammad Zakirullah says. He is the Deputy Director at the Chief Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CCR). The Chief Commissionerate is an attached department to the Ministry of SAFRON and acts as their advising body. “The repatriation has to be voluntary, with dignity and honor. They will be sent back if they want to be sent back. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can force them out.” He explains to us that the people who were sent back after crackdowns following the expiry date of POR cards on March 31 were the undocumented refugees. The issue, he explains, was that it is hard to distinguish between the documented and undocumented refugees because they all live in the same localities. Any raid or arrest of an undocumented refugee is mistaken to be raids on documented refugees. Documented refugees, explains Zakirullah, would get effected by these crackdowns as well. “To discuss this matter and tackle this issue, we have been having meetings with the government which has lead up to this groundbreaking decision to register the undocumented refugees,” Zakirullah says.
The revised policy was passed by the cabinet on 7th February, 2017 when the POR cards expiry was also extended. Upon recommendations from the Ministry of SAFRON, some major changes were approved from the cabinet. “Documentation of unregistered Afghans is one of the most important policy in the new Pakistan National Refugee Law. We are talking about the estimated 0.6 million Afghans living here for decades now,”Zakirullah says. “They face harassment and they do not get grants from UNHCR if they wish to go back to Afghanistan. Now, they will also get the $200 grant to help them return back to their home country. This is a project which will be fully funded by the Pakistani government.”
The process of registration will help give this large, face-less group an identity. This will help in ensuring security in the country and help in monitoring the movement of groups after they are repatriated. Different visa categories for Afghans have also been made for “better management and continued voluntary repatriation.” Another reason for this decision is to make the Afghans tax payers, and lessen the burden on economy. Since many Afghans are settled in Saudi Arabia and Canada, the Afghans living here get a lot of remittances which are transferred illegally owing to the fact that they cannot make bank accounts. This decision would also help change this.
“We are basically trying our best to motivate, assist and facilitate any refugee who wants to go back voluntarily. And for those who do not wish to return, we will try to manage them by bringing them into the tax paying group and registering their madrassahs etc.,”Fahmina Taufiq, Director at the Chief Commissinerate for Afghan Refugees, says.
Fahmina believes the reason behind this decision to be passed now and not earlier was because it was not properly presented before. This time, Ministry of SAFRON and CCR did an in-depth analysis of the issue after interviewing and speaking to multiple stakeholders, such as UNHCR and different ministries. “Hearing their concerns and their reservations regarding the issue helped us understand the problem better. We had two all-parties conferences where we tried to gauge the opinions of the political leaders and then devised this policy,” Fahmina explains.
After this, POR card holders can voluntarily go back to Afghanistan till December 31. The status of those being registered right now remains uncertain. The purpose of the registration project is for the benefit of the government and the refugees but does not mean they can stay indefinitely in the country. “Nothing is certain right now about the extensions. There is a high chance it will be extended again,” Zakirullah says.
“There is going to be better border management from now onwards. Previously there used to be 50,000 people moving across the border daily. Now, with the Afghans being documented and carrying passports, they will be checked strictly,” Zakirullah says. “For as long as they are here, it is better to help them live better lives.”
The governments of Pakistan, Iran and UNHCR had a joint conference in 2012 which led them to form the “Solutions Strategy for Afghan Refugees to Support Voluntary Repatriation, Sustainable Reintegration and Assistance to Host Countries” which recommended different programs for the social cohesion of the Afghanis and their community development. “The Refugee-affected and Hosting Areas (RAHA) program is currently ongoing and it seeks to help build and sustain the lives of the Afghan refugees,” Fahmina Taufiq says. “Afghanistan is not stable and we acknowledge the difficulty the refugees face when they move back. For this purpose, we have been asking authorities like UNHCR to fund development in Afghanistan because otherwise life there is miserable,” she says.
The truth, however, remains that they do not want to go back. “We were taking a survey in Mansehra once and one of the questions we were asking the Afghans was when they want to go back. We were asking them they if they want to stay for a year and they said no more than that and we said, okay ten years and they said no more than that and we said, okay then a hundred years and they said they would rather die than go back,” Zakirullah recalls. A newspaper is lying on the desk with the news of the Kabul blast claiming more than 80 years. “How can they go back to this life?” Zakir asks, gesturing at the paper in front of him. “The Afghans have been living here for 37 years. It took them 37 years to build a life for themselves. How can we expect them to go back to this life?”
