Karachi: More than two years after Pakistan started a crackdown against Afghan nationals, nearly 40,000 of them have left the Balochistan capital Quetta, a top provincial official has said.
Since October 2023, when Pakistan asked all the foreign nationals, including Afghan illegal immigrants, to leave voluntarily or face deportation, the deadline has been extended multiple times.
Pakistan hosts over 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees, with many more living without documentation. The government recently launched yet another repatriation drive, citing security and economic concerns, prompting thousands of Afghans to return to their home country.
The authorities have fastened the deportation measures by ordering the closure of around 54 Afghan refugee camps across the country.
Quetta Commissioner Mir Ullah Badhani said that most of the Afghans who have returned home were living in the Afghan Basti (town) on the Eastern bypass of Quetta for the last 35-40 years and had constructed quarters and buildings for residence and businesses.
Feroze Shah, a resident of Qadirabad, as the basti is known, said it was occupied mostly by poor people who were forced to leave or were leaving for Afghanistan, uncertain of their future and were without any proper belongings.
“Over the past two years, hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees have been expelled from different parts of Pakistan, some of whom are our relatives or belong to our tribes,” he said.
“Now the influx has grown because winter will soon start in Afghanistan, and people want to cross over so that they can settle down and find places to stay before peak cold,” he added.
According to the Commissioner, refugees crossing over to Afghanistan via the Chaman border have slowed down due to the recent conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Hundreds of Afghan refugees had been put up in camps near the Chaman border waiting for their turn to cross over, Badhani said. “So far close to 40,000 Afghans had crossed over via the Chaman border.”
Since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan has hosted millions of refugees, but initiated a crackdown on them since October 2023.
After the Taliban came into power in Kabul in 2021, another 7,00,000 Afghans crossed over to Pakistan.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, between the start of the expulsion campaign in October 2023 and October 2025, 1.5 million Afghans left Pakistan either voluntarily or were deported.
One of the major crises faced by the Afghan refugees, who did well in Pakistan and built their houses in residential schemes, and set up businesses, is that they are now forced to sell their houses in Quetta at low rates.
PTI
