Following the Taliban’s comeback to power, at least 44,000 Afghans who were cleared for resettlement to Western countries are still stuck in Pakistan, the Foreign Office (FO) announced on Thursday.
In August 2021, following the fall of the government backed by NATO, over 120,000 individuals, primarily from Afghanistan, were airlifted out of Kabul in a disorderly evacuation.
Since then, hundreds of thousands more Afghans have escaped Taliban rule, many of them with the promise of a fresh start in the countries that have been under occupation for 20 years.
Three years after the Taliban took power, according to FO spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, there were still 25,000 Afghans living in Pakistan who had been given permission to relocate to the US.
Australia has taken 9,000 Afghans living in Pakistan; Canada has accepted 6,000, Germany has accepted 3,000, and Britain has accepted over 1,000 – all of whom have not yet been evacuated.
At a weekly press briefing, Baloch said reporters, “We have urged them to expedite the approval and visa issuance process for these countries, for these individuals, so that they are relocated as soon as possible.”
Following the fall of Kabul, the majority of nations closed their embassies in Afghanistan; consequently, many Afghan refugees were detained in Pakistan while their embassies in Islamabad handled their cases.
Many of the Afghans who were promised transfer were part of the administration that received international support, and they now fear that the Taliban government will take revenge.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif put pressure on UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi on Tuesday regarding the backlog of Afghans who are waiting to be relocated and the significant number of refugees who have come but have no intention of leaving.
PM Shehbaz reportedly reminded Grandi that “the international community must recognize the burden being shouldered by Pakistan while hosting such a large refugee population, and demonstrate collective responsibility,” according to a statement provided by his office.
Approximately 600,000 Afghans have visited Pakistan since the Taliban seized power and imposed their strict interpretation of Islam.
In the forty years prior, millions more had arrived as refugees from a series of wars that included the Soviet invasion, a civil war, and the US-led occupation that followed 9/11.
However, as relations with Kabul worsened over security, Islamabad began a campaign to expel a large number of unauthorized Afghans last year.
Fearing arrest, over half a million people have returned to Afghanistan. The federal cabinet announced on Wednesday that it would continue to advocate for the return of undocumented Afghan refugees to their country of origin while extending the stay of registered refugees for an additional year.
