ISLAMABAD: Pakistan announced on Tuesday “illegal immigrants” had until November 1 to leave the country or face being deported, with the interior minister saying 14 of 24 suicide bombings in the South Asian nation this year were carried out by Afghans.
Officials say hundreds of thousands of Afghans have traveled to Pakistan since foreign forces left Afghanistan and the Taliban took over Kabul in 2021. Even before then, Pakistan hosted some 1.5 million registered refugees, one of the largest such populations in the world, according to the United Nations refugee agency. More than a million others are estimated to live in Pakistan unregistered.
Grappling with an economic crisis of its own and a sharp rise in terror attacks, Pakistan’s government is increasingly anxious about the number of Afghans in the country.
Police last month launched a crackdown against those they say are living in Pakistan without legal documents, arresting hundreds of Afghans.
“Illegal citizens, illegal immigrants that are staying in Pakistan via illegal means, we have given them a deadline of November 1,” Interior Minister Sarfaraz Bugti told reporters at a briefing after a meeting chaired by the prime minister.
The meeting was held days after suicide bombers separately hit two mosques last week in Mastung and Hangu, killing 65 people.
“They [illegal immigrants] should return to their respective countries by November 1 voluntarily and if they don’t, the state’s law enforcement, whether they be provincial governments or federal government institutions, we will deport them via this enforcement.”
Bugti said after Nov. 1, foreign nationals would not be allowed to enter Pakistan without passports or a valid entry visa, and from Oct. 10 to 31, the government would allow only those Afghan nationals to enter Pakistan who possessed a computerized e-Tazkira (electronic identity card).
The minister said the government had formed a task force that would from Nov. 1 confiscate properties and businesses run by illegal migrants that were not part of Pakistan’s tax net. He said businesses jointly operated and properties that illegal immigrants owned with Pakistani citizens would also be confiscated.
“Any Pakistani who is involved in this facilitation would be punished according to Pakistan’s law,” Bugti added.
The interior ministry would also set up a web portal and a helpline on which citizens would be able to inform the government about illegal immigrants, identity cards, and activities such as hoarding and smuggling.
“From January till now, there have been 14 suicide bombings [in Pakistan]. Of those 24, 14 suicide bombings were carried out by Afghan nationals. They were Afghans who attacked us,” Bugti said, naming a number of recent attacks in which he said Afghans had been found to be involved.
The Director (Repatriation) Afghan Commissionerate, Fazal Rabi, told Arab News provincial governments would collect data of all undocumented and illegal immigrants in their respective territories and prepare a proper transportation plan to take them to the borders for deportation.
“Under the law, the police and other law enforcement agencies can arrest and deport any foreigner living in Pakistan without a valid visa or valid registration in case of Afghans,” he said, adding that the registration cards of some Afghan refugees expired in June this year and they should be allowed “a grace time till renewal of their cards.” 
In a crackdown against ‘illegally residing foreigners,’ Islamabad police said it had so far arrested 451 people and registered 65 cases.
“This is an ongoing operation against all those living in Pakistan illegally without any valid visa and documents including Afghans without any discrimination,” Islamabad police spokesperson Taqi Jawad told Arab News.
“It is imperative to follow Pakistani laws to live in Pakistan,” he said. “This is a cognizable offense to provide job, shelter or extend any illegal assistance to illegally residing foreigners in Pakistan.” 
Islamabad blames the surge in militant attacks on the Pakistani Taliban, saying that they have become increasingly emboldened with the Taliban in power and have launched attacks against Pakistan from Afghan soil.
Afghanistan says it does not allow its soil to be used by militants.
The TTP has especially stepped up its attacks on Pakistan since November last year when it unilaterally called off a tenuous peace deal that had been brokered by Kabul.
The Pakistani Taliban, responsible for some of the bloodiest attacks in Pakistan since the group’s formation in 2007, have denied responsibility for Friday’s two blasts. No other group has claimed responsibility either.
“After Mastung blast, we are working on a multi-pronged strategy. We have to get the Afghans out. We have to enforce the law and [have] zero tolerance for lawlessness,” interior secretary Aftab Durrani told Arab News, referring to one of the attacks last week in which 60 people were killed in southwest Pakistan.
“We have to target militant groups. We have to target the political parties’ militant wings and basically our theme is hardening the state, hardening the writ of the state as this is not a soft state. We are a tough state. And we can take any action.”

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) of former Prime Minister Imran Khan wrote a letter to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Tuesday and called for action against enforced disappearances that it said were being used as an “orchestrated pre-poll rigging campaign” against the party.

Khan, who is serving a three-year jail sentence in a corruption case, has openly accused the powerful military and intelligence agencies of trying to destroy his political party, and said ongoing legal cases against him were a ploy to keep him out of the next general election likely in January. The conviction in the corruption case has effectively barred him from running for public office. 

A bruising year-long standoff between Khan, Pakistan’s most popular leader according to polls, and the army came to a head when military buildings and property were ransacked in May by Khan supporters after he was briefly arrested in a separate land graft case. After the violent protests, thousands of Khan supporters were arrested, the PTI says, and scores of its members, including the ex-premier’s closest aides, abandoned the PTI over what is widely believed to be pressure from the state.

The military and the previous government of PM Shehbaz Sharif, which was ruling during the May protests, have denied a crackdown against the PTI and said only those who were involved in the violence would be punished. The caretaker administration of PM Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar has said the PTI would get a “level playing field” in the next elections.

“I wanted to bring to your attention perhaps the most serious of all the violations of the law and the Constitution happening right now as part of an orchestrated pre-poll election rigging campaign against PTI, the issue of enforced disappearances,” the PTI’s letter to the chief election commission said.

“The impunity with which individuals linked to PTI are being illegally arrested and disappeared, is perhaps the most blatant and open form of pre-poll rigging happening in the country. Even more than that, it is an exceptionally serious violation of Pakistan’s system of law and justice of the sort that has not been seen before, certainly not in recent history.”

The letter listed six PTI senior members as “victims” of a campaign of enforced disappearances, namely Sadaqat Ali Abbasi, former PTI MNA, missing since September 1, Usman Dar, a former adviser to Khan, missing since September 10, Abdul Kareem Khan, a PTI ticket holder from Lahore, missing since September 19, Awais Younus, PTI Lahore Secretary Information, missing since September 19, Farrukh Habib, a former minister of state, missing since September 27 and Sheikh Rasheed, a key Khan aide, missing since September 17.

The PTI said the disappearances were in violation of several articles of the Constitution of Pakistan, including Article 9 (security of a person), Article 10 (safeguards against arrest and detention under which anyone detained in custody must be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours), Article 10A (right to fair trial) and Article 14 (inviolability of dignity of a person and which protects the privacy of homes and bans any form of torture in custody), as well as the constitutionally guaranteed right of life.

The statement reminded the administration of PM Kakar that the caretaker’s primary responsibility was to hold free and fair elections and “be impartial to every person and political party.”

The PTI said the disappearances also contravened Pakistan’s commitments on several international covenants and treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), as well as the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CED), which is obligatory upon Pakistan under customary international law principles.

The letter named many pro-Khan journalists who had been arrested and later released, and members of former PM Khan’s staff and young volunteers who had disappeared for various lengths of time.

“Unless these people are released, and the law enforcement agencies, and any other agencies involved
are reprimanded to immediately desist from such practices, I am afraid that no question exists of the
upcoming elections being even remotely free or fair,” the statement, which was signed by the party’s secretary general, said.

“We hope that you will treat this matter with the urgency and seriousness it deserves, note what is happening, and discharge your duty in passing immediate and clear instructions to the government to produce these people, and to immediately desist from such activities in the future.”