Families torn apart as Pakistan expels tens of thousands of Afghans

On the day Baz Gul’s world fell apart, he was picking up trash with his ten-year-old son, hoping to earn a few dollars to provide for his family of five.

He and his son were arrested on September 12 in the Pakistani city of Karachi during a raid on Afghan migrants. Mr Gul, 30, was born and raised in Karachi and married his wife there. But as the son of refugees who fled to Pakistan in 1992, he is a citizen of Afghanistan – and no longer welcome in his native country.

His wife, Ram Bibi, 29, also an Afghan national, sold valuables to hire a lawyer who could argue that Mr. Gul was living legally in Pakistan. But he was deported to Afghanistan on November 13, after Pakistan set a deadline for the departure of all 1.7 million illegal migrants, most of them Afghans. Mr. Gul is now stranded in a country he does not know, leaving his pregnant wife and children at the mercy of impoverished relatives to survive.

The Gul family is among hundreds torn apart, rights activists say, as refugees from Afghanistan have streamed out of Pakistan, obeyed deportation orders or been forcibly removed under a crackdown that followed a rise in tensions between the two countries.

Some of the deported Afghans married Pakistani women but were unable to obtain Pakistani citizenship. Others, like Mr. Gul, are married to Afghan women and are expelled individually from their families after being arrested while working or traveling. Many of the deportees were born in Pakistan, which does not automatically grant citizenship to people born there.

After the deportations, men and women, parents and children wonder when and if they will see each other again. Separated from a primary breadwinner, many now have to fend for themselves.

“Families that are separated – especially women and children – will fall prey to exploitation,” said Saeed Husain, a Karachi-based anthropologist who studies migration.

A climate of fear has descended on Afghan refugee communities as the Pakistani government has carried out its deportation campaign. In the narrow alleys of Karachi’s slums, police roam through houses day and night. At markets they look for people with specific clothing and appearance. Along the way they stop randomly to check identity documents.

Once apprehended, the Afghans board buses, police vans and even three-wheeled rickshaws, bound for a feared destination: a detention center surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed officers. Behind these walls, the migrants learn their fate, out of the sight of journalists and rights activists.

Most Afghans are facing collective deportation and returning to a homeland that many of them have never seen, a country where the Taliban are back in power and finding work is difficult.

The crackdown intensified after November 1, the deadline Pakistan set when it announced a month earlier that unregistered foreigners must leave. According to Pakistani government statistics, more than 300,000 Afghan migrants, many of whom have been in Pakistan for decades, have been forcibly returned to their home countries or have gone there voluntarily to avoid arrest and deportation.

A group of Pakistani politicians and rights activists filed a petition in the country’s Supreme Court on November 2, challenging the government’s inhumane decision to deport illegal immigrants. The court rejected the request, saying it did not raise any fundamental rights issues.

Pakistani authorities say they enforce immigration laws the same way they would any other country. They say they do not repatriate Afghans with valid documents, and that deported people can apply for visas to reunite with relatives.

Yet families divided by the evictions are faced with difficult choices. Gharib Nawaz, an Afghan baker born and raised in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, was arrested on November 3 and subsequently deported for not having the temporary documents needed for legal residence.

His wife, Nargis, a Pakistani citizen who uses one name, said her husband thought obtaining the documents would harm his chances of becoming a citizen of Pakistan. But he was never able to acquire citizenship: while foreign women who marry Pakistani men can legally become citizens in Pakistan, there are no provisions for foreign men who marry Pakistani women.

Now 28-year-old Nargis must decide whether to stay in Pakistan, away from her husband, the family’s sole breadwinner, or take their two daughters to Afghanistan, leaving her parents behind in a country she has never set foot in. and where education is difficult. limited for girls.

“My daughters are not willing to go to Afghanistan” and give up their future, she said.

She expressed her anger at the Pakistani government, saying that while it cannot handle runaway inflation or militant attacks, it is “surprisingly efficient at tearing apart happy families and separating fathers from their children.”

Nargis is particularly concerned about the deteriorating relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, mainly linked to a sharp increase in attacks in Pakistan by fighters stationed across the border.

“I fear that such a hostile situation will make it difficult for my husband to re-enter Pakistan and reunite with his family,” she said.

The deportation of some Afghans encourages other family members to return to Afghanistan as well. Noor Khan, 55, a vegetable market worker in Karachi, where he arrived from Afghanistan in the late 1980s, said he had decided to return to Kabul at the end of November even though he has temporary papers that allow him to live. legal in Pakistan.

On November 4, one of the sons of Mr. Khan, Shahbaz, 20, arrested after leaving home to do some shopping. Shahbaz, who had no documentation, called two days later from Spin Boldak, an Afghan border town, to tell his family about his deportation. Shahbaz had no money or contacts in Afghanistan, but Mr Khan arranged for him to stay with a distant relative in Kabul.

Mr Khan said he would go to Kabul to avoid a possible forced deportation. “I know that after the undocumented migrants it is our turn,” he said. “It is a difficult decision, but it is better than being humiliated by the police in Pakistan.”

For the family of Mr. Gul, the garbage picker in Karachi, one lesson from his deportation was the futility of fighting the authorities.

After he and his son were arrested, they were taken to a police station. The boy was released after the family paid a bribe, they said. But officials tore up a photocopy of Mr. Gul’s Afghan Citizen Card, a document issued by the Pakistani government that allowed Afghan refugees to stay legally, the family said.

Nawaz Kakar, a relative who found the father and son at the police station after they failed to return home, said he showed Mr Gul’s original citizenship card to police but they still would not release him.

Mr Gul went to court, where he was given a two-month prison sentence, a $34 fine and a deportation order to be executed after he had served his sentence. But when the government began forced deportations at the Nov. 1 deadline, Mr. Kakar said, prison authorities forced Mr. Gul to put his fingerprint on a document declaring his willingness to be repatriated to Afghanistan.

A senior police official denied allegations of bribery and document falsification, claiming such claims are fabricated by illegal migrants trying to avoid deportation.

Mr Kakar said the family’s main concerns now are who will care for Mr Gul’s wife and children and whether Mr Gul will be able to return to Pakistan. “Since Gul’s arrest, I have been helping his family with food, but I cannot fully support them,” said Mr Kakar, a father of five who earns $5 a day.

He said that as Afghan citizens, Mr. Gul’s wife and children live in constant fear, unable to sleep peacefully, afraid that they could be woken every morning by a knock on the door.