TORKHAM: More than 100,000 Afghans have left Pakistan in the past three weeks, the interior ministry said Tuesday, after Islamabad announced the widespread cancelation of residence permits.
Calling Afghans “terrorists and criminals,” the Pakistan government launched its mass eviction campaign on April 1.
Analysts say the expulsions are designed to pressure neighboring Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities, which Islamabad blames for fueling a rise in border attacks.
The interior ministry told AFP that “100,529 Afghans have left in April.”
Convoys of Afghan families have been heading to the border since the start of April when the deadline to leave expired, crossing into a country mired in a humanitarian crisis.
“I was born in Pakistan and have never been to Afghanistan,” 27-year-old Allah Rahman told AFP at the Torkham border on Saturday.
“I was afraid the police might humiliate me and my family. Now we’re heading back to Afghanistan out of sheer helplessness.”
Afghanistan’s prime minister Hasan Akhund on Saturday condemned the “unilateral measures” taken by its neighbor after Pakistan’s foreign minister Ishaq Dar flew to Kabul for a day-long visit to discuss the returns.
Akhund urged the Pakistani government to “facilitate the dignified return of Afghan refugees.”
Afghans in Pakistan have reported weeks of arbitrary arrests, extortion and harassment by authorities, with many of those forcibly returned living in Sindh and Punjab provinces.
Many people are leaving voluntarily, choosing to depart instead of face deportation, but the UN refugee agency UNHCR said that in April alone, more arrests and detentions took place in Pakistan — 12,948 — than in all of last year.
Pakistan’s security forces are under enormous pressure along the border with Afghanistan as they battle a growing insurgency by ethnic nationalists in Balochistan in the southwest, and the Pakistani Taliban and its affiliates in the northwest.
Last year was the deadliest in Pakistan in a decade.
The government frequently accuses Afghan nationals of taking part in attacks and blames Kabul for allowing militants to take refuge on its soil, a charge Taliban leaders deny.
Millions of Afghans have poured into Pakistan over the past several decades fleeing successive wars, as well as hundreds of thousands since the return of the Taliban government in 2021.
Some Pakistanis have grown weary of hosting a large Afghan population as security and economic woes deepen, and the deportation campaign has widespread support.
“They came here for refuge but ended up taking jobs, opening businesses. They took jobs from Pakistanis who are already struggling,” 41-year-old hairdresser Tanveer Ahmad told AFP as he gave a customer a shave.
More than half of Afghans being deported were children, the UNHCR said on Friday.
The women and girls among those crossing were entering a country where they are banned from education beyond secondary school and barred from many sectors of work.
In the first phase of returns in 2023, hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans were forced across the border in the space of a few weeks.
In the second phase announced in March, the Pakistan government canceled the residence permits of more than 800,000 Afghans and warned thousands more awaiting relocation to other countries to leave by the end of April.
“Afghans take on jobs Pakistanis consider shameful, like collecting garbage,” a shopkeeper told AFP on the condition of anonymity.
“Who will do that after they’re gone?“
Islamabad says more than 100,000 Afghans left Pakistan in April
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Islamabad says more than 100,000 Afghans left Pakistan in April
- More than 100,000 Afghans have left Pakistan in the past three weeks, the interior ministry said Tuesday
Switzerland mourns Crans-Montana fire tragedy
- All of Switzerland will mark a national day of mourning Friday for the dozens of mostly teenagers killed when fire ravaged a ski resort bar crammed with New Year revellers
CRANS MONTANA: All of Switzerland will mark a national day of mourning Friday for the dozens of mostly teenagers killed when fire ravaged a ski resort bar crammed with New Year revellers.
Just over a week after the tragedy at the Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, which left 40 dead and 116 injured, the wealthy Alpine nation will come to a standstill for a minute of silence at 2:00 p.m. (1300 GMT).
A chorus of church bells will then ring throughout the country.
The moment of silence will stand as a “testament to the shared grief felt by the entire nation with all the families and friends directly affected,” the Swiss government said in a statement.
At the same time, a memorial ceremony for the victims will be held in Martigny, a town about 50 kilometers (31 miles) down the valley from Crans-Montana, which had been rendered all but inaccessible by a large snowstorm.
Inhabitants of the plush ski resort town will meanwhile be able to watch the ceremony as it is livestreamed to large screens, including at the congress center that for days after the tragedy accommodated families seeking news of missing loved ones.
Among ‘worst tragedies’
A memorial that has sprung up in front of the bar, loaded with flowers, candles and messages of grief and support, was covered in an igloo-like tarp Thursday to protect it from the heavy snowfall.
Swiss President Guy Parmelin, who has declared the fire “one of the worst tragedies that our country has experienced,” will be joined for the ceremony by his French and Italian counterparts, whose countries lost nine and six nationals respectively in the fire.
Top officials from Belgium, Luxembourg, Serbia and the European Union were also due to participate in the ceremony.
Most of those impacted by the inferno at Le Constellation were Swiss, but a total of 19 nationalities were among the fatalities and the wounded.
Half of those killed in the blaze were under 18, including some as young as 14.
Of those injured, 83 remain in hospital, with the most severely burned airlifted to specialist centers across Switzerland and abroad.
Prosecutors believe the blaze started when champagne bottles with sparklers attached were raised too close to sound insulation foam on the ceiling in the bar’s basement section.
Experts have suggested that what appeared to be highly flammable foam may have caused a so-called flashover — a near-simultaneous ignition of everything in an enclosed space, trapping many of the young patrons.
Video footage which has emerged from the tragedy shows young people desperately trying to flee the scene, some breaking windows to try to force their way out.
On Tuesday, municipal authorities acknowledged that no fire safety inspections had been conducted at Le Constellation since 2019, prompting outrage.
‘Staggering’
The investigation underway will seek to shed light on the responsibilities of the authorities, but also of bar owners Jacques and Jessica Moretti.
The French couple, facing charges of manslaughter by negligence, bodily harm by negligence and arson by negligence, have been called in for questioning on Friday, sources close to the investigation told AFP.
The pair, who have not been detained, said in a statement Tuesday that they were “devastated and overwhelmed with grief,” and pledged their “full cooperation” with investigators.
They will need to answer numerous questions about why so many minors were in the bar, and whether fire safety standards were adhered to.
There has been much focus on the soundproofing foam, which, according to photos taken by the owners, had been added during renovations in 2015.
A video filmed by a member of the public, screened Monday by Swiss broadcaster RTS, showed that the danger was known years ago.
“Watch out for the foam!,” a bar employee said during 2019 New Year’s Eve celebrations, as champagne bottles with sparklers were brought out.
“This video is staggering,” Romain Jordan, a lawyer representing several affected families, told AFP, saying it showed “there was an awareness of this risk — and that possibly this risk was accepted.”
