MITHI, SINDH: Pakistan’s southern region of Tharparkar in the Thar desert is facing an alarming rise in suicide cases, especially among women, with authorities linking the emerging health crisis to chronic mental illness in the impoverished district.
Between 2016 to 2020, the Sindh Mental Health Authority (SMHA), an arm of the provincial government, recorded 767 suicides in the southern Sindh province, of which the highest number, 79 cases, occurred in Tharparkar.
Tharparkar police data shows that at least 48 people — 31 women — have taken their own lives in the district since January this year.
Between June 11 and June 16 alone, eight suicide cases were registered in the region.
This month, the SMHA carried out what it called a “psychiatric autopsy” of the district to determine the “reasons behind suicides, including why more women were committing suicides,” the authority’s chairman Dr. Karim Khawaja, said.
“The results of the psychiatric autopsy will be available in the next few weeks,” he said. “It will reveal the real reasons for suicide cases and help in preventing suicides in Tharparkar.”
Baadal Saand, who heads the anti-suicide cell of the Tharparkar police, attributed a majority of the cases to “mental illness and depression.”
Dr. Bharat Kumar, the district’s only psychiatrist, said poverty “may be a vital reason” but the “mother reason” was psychiatric illness.
The UNDP’s Multidimensional Poverty Index for Pakistan reports that 87 percent of the population in the Thar desert region lives in poverty.
“Besides psychiatric illness and depression, other reasons are lack of family support or social support, or economic issues,” Kumar said.
Khatau Jani, a senior journalist from the region, concurred that rising mental illness in the region was caused by extreme poverty.
“These are extreme poverty-hit communities,” Jani said. “What Thar needs is increased funding from both federal and provincial government poverty reduction programs.”
Climate change is also driving locals into more deprivation as their livelihoods depend on rainfall in a drought-battered region.
A report published by the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) in early June indicated that droughts persisting since October last year had resulted in increased food insecurity in a number of Sindh districts, including Tharpakar.
“Due to consistent deficiency of rainfall since October 2020, the moderate drought has been further intensified into severe drought especially in the southwestern Balochistan and southeastern Sindh,” the PDM said. “Drought conditions may further affect agriculture and livestock.”
Experts say modern agriculture could relieve the poverty-stricken area.
Dr. Amanullah Mahar, assistant professor at the Center for Environmental Science at the University of Sindh, recommended planting moringa trees, which flourish in arid and semiarid environments, and whose fruit pods can be consumed as food.
“Locals would not have to wait for rains for the production of moringa,” he said.
Another option was biosaline agriculture, Mahar said, a means of producing plants in saline-rich soil in arid, water-scarce locations. The method has already been tested in the district.
“Recently there was a successful experiment with biosaline agriculture in Tharparkar,” he said. “It is important to expand this agriculture pattern throughout the desert.”
In impoverished Pakistani desert region, an alarming rise in suicide cases
https://arab.news/2mcyj
In impoverished Pakistani desert region, an alarming rise in suicide cases
- Between 2016 to 2020, 79 out of the 767 suicide cases in Sindh province were reported in Tharparkar district
- At least 48 people — 31 women — have taken their own lives in the district since January this year
Separated twice: An Afghan man’s life in Pakistan and the fear of losing home again
- Lost as a child in Peshawar, Mohammad Rahim Khan built a life in Pakistan but remains undocumented
- Deportation drive of ‘illegal’ foreigners exposes legal gaps around adoption, marriage, refugee status
ISLAMABAD: Mohammad Rahim Khan was five years old when he last saw his mother.
It was at the Hajji Camp bus stop in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar, more than four decades ago. His mother, an Afghan refugee fleeing war, had brought him across the Tari Mangal border in Kurram district and into Pakistan. While waiting at the crowded terminal, Khan wandered to a nearby toy shop. When he returned, she was gone.
He searched for her for two days. She never came back.
A local shopkeeper, Ali Muhammad, took pity on the child and brought him home, promising to help find his family. The temporary shelter became permanent. Khan grew up in Pakistan, adopted informally into the household, and never returned to Afghanistan.
Now 45, he lives on the outskirts of Islamabad in a modest two-room house, working as a daily wage laborer. But a nationwide deportation drive launched by Pakistan in 2023 has placed his entire life under threat.
Since November 2023, authorities have deported nearly 2 million Afghan nationals, targeting those without legal documentation. Khan, who has remained undocumented throughout his adult life, fears he may soon be among them.
“I spoke to my lawyer that I am very worried,” Khan told Arab News. “I love Pakistan.”
A FAMILY WITHOUT PAPERS
Ali Muhammad later married Khan to his daughter, Gul Mina. Together, they have six children, four daughters and two sons. Yet despite decades in Pakistan, Khan’s Afghan nationality continues to shadow the family.
Khan never held an Afghan refugee card, Afghan Citizen Card (ACC), Proof of Registration (POR), or any other formal documentation. His family assumed for decades that his informal adoption, marriage to a Pakistani citizen, and long residence would provide sufficient legal standing. They only sought legal advice when the deportation drive began threatening separation.
Without a Pakistani national identity card, his children cannot obtain Form-B, the birth registration document required for school enrolment.
“They [children] are told to get a Form-B,” Gul Mina told Arab News. “Otherwise, they will not go to school.”
Three of their daughters were forced to leave school after eighth grade.
Healthcare has also been affected. When Khan’s 13-year-old son, Ehsanullah, fractured his arm, a public hospital refused to issue a registration card without identity documents.
“Then I went to a [private clinic] in Chak Shahzad and got my treatment there,” Khan said.
The family has petitioned the Islamabad High Court to block his deportation. Lawyers say the case highlights how thousands of long-term residents fall through legal cracks created by Pakistan’s citizenship, refugee and documentation framework.
LEGAL GREY ZONE
Pakistan does not legally recognize Western-style adoption. Instead, it uses a guardianship system under the 1890 Guardians and Wards Act, aligning with Islamic principles that preserve lineage, so adopted children don’t inherit or change their family name but receive care, education and welfare through court-appointed guardianship.
“Because we don’t have a legal pathway for adoption per se, the adopted child does not get citizenship of the adopting parents automatically,” said Advocate Umer Ijaz Gillani, a legal expert on citizenship.
Years earlier, Khan’s father-in-law had offered to register him as his biological son to obtain identity documents, but Khan refused, calling the move fraudulent. Because Khan later married his father-in-law’s daughter, both he and his wife cannot legally list the same person as their father on official records, leaving them without a lawful workaround.
Marriage offers no certainty either. Pakistan’s Citizenship Act of 1951 grants citizenship to foreign women married to Pakistani men, but is silent on foreign husbands married to Pakistani women.
While higher courts have, at times, ruled in favor of such men, implementation has been inconsistent. In October 2025, the Supreme Court struck down a high court order that had directed authorities to grant citizenship to an Afghan man married to a Pakistani woman.
Even the Pakistan Origin Card (POC), a long-term residency document, remains difficult to secure.
“We have experienced that in the case of especially Afghan men who marry Pakistani women, the government authorities are often reluctant to recognize this right,” Gillani said.
According to submissions made by government officials in court, authorities have received at least 117 applications for nationality from Afghan men married to Pakistani women following directives issued by the Peshawar High Court, reflecting a broader pattern rather than isolated cases.
‘NO RELAXATION’
Officials say the deportation policy allows no exceptions.
“No relaxation has been granted by the government, including for those who’ve married to Pakistani citizens,” said Asmatullah Shah, the chief commissionerate for Afghan refugees.
“If they want to live here, they should go back and apply for a visa and then they can come here with valid documentation.”
Legal experts note that deportation would send Khan to Afghanistan despite having no known relatives there, and that returning legally would require obtaining an Afghan passport and a Pakistani visa, costs far beyond the means of a daily wage laborer.
For Khan’s mother-in-law, Husn Pari, who raised him for decades as her own son, the prospect is devastating.
“When I am not able to meet [Khan] for one day, my day does not pass,” she said. “His own mother, how much pain must she be in?”
For Khan, the fear of deportation echoes the trauma of his childhood.
“Before I was separated from my first mother,” he said. “The second time I will be separated from my second mother. This is very difficult for me.”
