QUETTA: A Pakistani province is setting targets for police to arrest and deport hundreds of thousands of Afghans who are in the country illegally, officials said Thursday. 

The measure is part of a nationwide crackdown following a sharp decline in the expulsion of Afghans living in Pakistan without legal permission. Near the Chaman border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan, local residents were protesting against new travel visa requirements aimed at cutting down on illegal immigration that have disrupted traffic in the area. 

Some of those targeted for deportation had apparently gone to remote areas in Pakistan to avoid arrest, authorities said. 

“Instructions have gone to police to arrest Afghans living in Pakistan illegally,” said Jan Achakzai, spokesperson for the government in southwestern Pakistan’s Balochistan province. He said authorities have been asked to deport 10,000 Afghans a day. 

Achakzai made his comment days after authorities at the two key northwestern Torkham and southwestern Chaman border crossings acknowledged that there has been a sudden decrease in the number of Afghans who were sent back to Afghanistan after being arrested on the charges of living in Pakistan illegally. 

An estimated 1.7 million Afghans were living in Pakistan in October when authorities announced the crackdown, saying that anyone without proper documents had to go back to their countries by Oct. 31 or be arrested. 

Since then, more than 400,000 Afghans returned to their home country. 

Pakistani officials say they are deporting only those foreigners, including Afghans, who are in the country illegally, and an estimated 1.4 million Afghans who are registered as refugees should not worry as they are not the target of the anti-migrant drive. Police in Pakistan have been going door to door to check migrants’ documentation. 

Pakistan has been hosting Afghans since the 1980s, when millions of Afghans fled south and east to the neighboring Islamic nation during the Soviet occupation of their country. The numbers spiked after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021. 

As part of its crackdown, Pakistan stopped recognizing special permits under which hundreds of thousands of residents in the Balochistan province border town of Chaman could cross between the two countries. The new visa requirement angered residents who have been rallying near the border, disrupting normal traffic toward the border crossing. 

The protesters want Pakistan to allow them to continue using the special permits for business purposes and to meet with relatives who live in the Afghan border city of Spin Boldak. 

In Afghanistan, the Taliban-led administration says it is providing shelter and food to returnees. According to Tolo News, an private Afghan outlet, Afghan refugees have complained of mistreatment by Pakistani soldiers after returning home. 

The alleged mistreatment of migrants by Pakistani authorities drew widespread condemnation from human organizations. 

On Tuesday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said Pakistani authorities have committed widespread abuses against Afghans living in the country to compel their return home. 

“Pakistani officials have created a coercive environment for Afghans to force them to return to life-threatening conditions in Afghanistan,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should immediately end the abuses and give Afghans facing expulsion the opportunity to seek protection in Pakistan.” 

Pakistani authorities have denied such allegations, saying anyone found guilty of mistreating Afghan immigrants lacking permanent legal status would be punished. Achakzai said migrants who are in the country illegally are held at deporting centers in a dignified manner before transporting them to border crossings so they can go back home. 

QUETTA: A protest in southwestern Pakistan over the alleged extrajudicial killing of a 24-year-old ethnic Baloch man entered its seventh day on Thursday, in an ongoing saga that has renewed debate over extrajudicial detentions and deaths and police impunity in Balochistan province where such incidents are not uncommon.

Last week, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) Balochistan issued a statement, seen by Arab News, saying Balach Baloch had confessed in custody to being a militant and carrying out a number of attacks. He was arrested on Nov. 20, as per the statement, in possession of five kilograms of explosive materials. Baloch was later killed in a raid on a militant hideout in the city of Turbat, the CTD said.

His family, which finally buried him on Wednesday but vowed to continue protests, has refuted CTD claims, saying Baloch was not involved in any unlawful activities but was picked up by the CTD on Oct. 29 and killed in a “fake encounter.”

Political leaders, human rights activists and families of victims have for decades spoken against killings by the police and other security agencies in staged encounters, a practice where officials claim the victim was killed in a gunfight though they were executed. Authorities deny involvement in such incidents. 

“Things are in progress,” a senior official in a “fact-finding” committee set up to probe the case told Arab News, declining to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the media about the inquiry. 

The body has five members and has been tasked to submit a report within 15 days.

“The families of the deceased blame others, but the Chief Minister Balochistan has constituted an inquiry commission to ascertain the circumstances,” Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti told reporters on Wednesday. “There are actions that need to be taken under the law, we can’t speak on assumptions.”

A spokesperson for the government of Balochistan and the deputy commissioner’s office did not respond to Arab News queries.

“SIT-IN WILL TURN INTO MOVEMENT“

Baloch’s killing has triggered outrage in cities across the Makran division, with a complete shutter down strike observed in Turbat and other towns on Wednesday while roads leading from the area to Pakistan’s main business hub, Karachi, were blocked by protesters.

Following a demand by Baloch’s family, a local court in Turbat had ordered the registration of a First Information Report (FIR), or police complaint, against the CTD team involved in the operation in which the 24-year-old was allegedly killed.

“Now we are protesting because despite court orders, why are the authorities not registering an FIR against the people who killed my brother,” Balach’s elder sister Najma Baloch told Arab News.
On the government’s inquiry tribunal, she said: 

“Neither do I know anything about the inquiry committee nor has anyone from the committee contacted us.”

“Now hundreds of people have joined the protest and are demanding registration of FIR against the CTD team,” she added, saying her family’s “clear demand” was that Baloch’s murderers be punished.

Waseem Safar, a local member of the Baloch Yakjehti Council (BYC) that is organizing the protests, said the protest would continue in Turbat and be expanded across the province if the police case was not filed.

“Now the sit-in will turn into a movement until authorities register an FIR against the personnel involved in Balach’s murder,” he said. “We will expand the protest across Balochistan against this extrajudicial killing.”

Senior analyst Dr. Amir Rana, who is the director of the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, said extrajudicial detentions and killings would continue as long as the pattern of releasing suspects involved in such crimes continued.

“If the authorities register an FIR against the CTD team involved in the recent Turbat killing, the state and its institutions, including the courts, will release them,” Rana told Arab News, adding that those involved needed to be brought to justice as per the law to set a precedent for the future.