As the clock ticked down to the November 1 deadline the caretaker government set for undocumented migrants to leave the country, Muhammad Rahim boarded a bus from Karachi to the Afghan border.

“We’d live here our whole life if they didn’t send us back,” said the 35-year-old Afghan national, who was born in Pakistan, married a Pakistani woman and raised his Pakistan-born children in the port city — but has no Pakistani identity documents.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan said some 60,000 Afghans returned between September 23 to October 22 from Pakistan, which had announced on Oct 4 that it would expel undocumented migrants who do not leave.

More than 100,000 Afghan migrants have already left Pakistan since the start of October. More than 80 per cent have left via the Torkham border in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the majority of Afghan migrants live.

And recent daily returnee figures are three times higher than normal, Taliban refugee ministry spokesman Abdul Mutaleb Haqqani told Reuters on Oct 26.

“Thousands of Afghan refugees are waiting for their turn in vehicles, lorries, and trucks, and the number continues to grow,” Irshad Mohmand, a senior government official at the Torkham border told AFP.

“More than 10,000 refugees have gathered since morning.”

Thousands more Afghans are waiting at the Chaman border, officials said — with numbers at both borders expected to double on Wednesday.

Despite huge pressure at the border, a government official based in Peshawar near the border said holding centres would still open as planned from Nov 1.

“This procedure does not require much time as they don’t possess passports and visas and don’t need to pass through immigration. In simple words, they are passing through a procedure of deportation,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Near Karachi’s Sohrab Goth area — home to one of the country’s largest Afghan settlements — a bus service operator named Azizullah said he had laid on extra services to cope with the exodus. Nearby, lines formed before competitor bus services headed to Afghanistan.

“Before I used to run one bus a week, now we have four to five a week,” said Azizullah, who — like all the Afghan migrants Reuters interviewed — spoke on condition that he be identified by only one name due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Reuters interviewed seven refugee families in Sohrab Goth, as well as four Taliban and Pakistani officials, community leaders, aid workers and advocates, who said Islamabad’s warning — and a subsequent rise in state-backed harassment — has torn families apart and pushed even Afghans with valid papers to leave.

The interior ministry did not immediately return a request for comment. Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in a statement that the expulsion plan was compliant with international norms and principles: “Our record of the last forty years in hosting millions of our Afghan brothers and sisters speaks for itself.”

Pakistan is home to over four million Afghan migrants and refugees, about 1.7m of whom are undocumented, according to Islamabad. Afghans make up the largest portion of migrants — many came after the Taliban retook Afghanistan in 2021, but a large number have been present since the 1979 Soviet invasion.

The expulsion threat came after suicide bombings this year which the government — without providing evidence — said involved Afghans. Islamabad has also blamed them for smuggling and other militant attacks.

Cash-strapped Pakistan, navigating record inflation and a tough International Monetary Fund bailout programme, also said undocumented migrants have drained its resources for decades.

Despite the challenges facing migrants, Pakistan is the only home many of them know and a sanctuary from the economic deprivation and extreme social conservatism that Afghanistan is grappling with, said Samar Abbas of the Sindh Human Rights Defenders Network, which is helping 200 Afghans seeking to remain.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban government has qualified Pakistan’s policy as “harassment”.

Rise in returns

In early September, an average of 300 people crossed the border into Afghanistan daily, according to international organisations working on migration issues, who provided data on the condition that they not be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. After Islamabad announced the November deadline, crossings jumped to roughly 4,000, the organisations said.

These figures are small compared to the number of people to be affected in the coming days. Caretaker Balochistan Information Minister Jan Achakzai told Reuters that the provincial government is opening three more border crossings.

For weeks, state-run television has run a countdown to Nov 1 on the top of its screens.

Interim Interior Minister Sarfaraz Bugti warned that law enforcement agencies will start removing “illegal immigrants who have … no justification” for being in Pakistan after Tuesday.

They will be processed at “holding centres” and then deported, he told reporters, adding that women, children and the elderly would be treated “respectfully”. Reuters could not determine how long they might be detained in the centres.

Pakistani citizens who help undocumented migrants obtain false identities or employment will face legal action, Bugti warned.

“Post-November will be very chaotic and there will be chaos in the Afghan refugee camps,” said Abbas, the advocate.

Fear and desperation

The UN refugee agency United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said Pakistan’s plans create “serious protection risks” for women and girls forced to leave. Restrictions in Afghanistan, especially on female NGO workers, have led to shrinking employment opportunities for women there.

While Pakistan says it will not target Afghans with legal status, many with proper documents also find themselves being targeted, according to migrant advocates.

UNHCR data shows that 14,700 documented Afghans left Pakistan as of Oct 18, more than double the 6,039 in all of last year.

The agency said in a statement that 78pc of recent returning Afghans it spoke to cited fear of arrest in Pakistan as the reason for their departure.

“To avoid any humiliation by the Pakistani authorities I have decided to leave,” Zulfiqar Khan, who was born to refugee parents in a sprawling Peshawar aid camp, told AFP last week.

Lawyers and activists have said the scale of the crackdown is unprecedented, appealing for more time for Afghans — some of whom have lived for decades in the country — to be given more time to pack up with dignity.

“The Pakistani government is using threats, abuse, and detention to coerce Afghan asylum seekers without legal status to return to Afghanistan or face deportation,” Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

There are more than 2.2m Afghan migrants in Pakistan with some form of documentation recognised by the government that conveys temporary residence rights.

Roughly 1.4m of them hold Proof of Registration (PoR) cards that expired on June 30, leaving them vulnerable. Islamabad says it will not take action against people with invalid cards, but Abbas told Reuters that police harassment has ramped up since the expulsion threat.

More than a dozen migrants that Reuters spoke to corroborated the claim, which was also repeated by Taliban diplomats in Pakistan.

Karachi East Superintendent of Police Uzair Ahmed told Reuters that while there might be “one or two” instances of harassment, it was non-systemic and offenders would be investigated.

Many Afghans with legal status told Reuters that they feel compelled to leave out of fear of being separated from family members without documentation.

Hajira, a 42-year-old widow in Sohrab Goth, told Reuters that she has the right to remain in Pakistan, as do two of her four sons. The other two don’t.

Fearing separation from her children, she plans on leaving with her sons and their families before the deadline expires.

Majida, a 31-year-old who was born in Pakistan, lives with her husband and their six children in an apartment complex in Sohrab Goth, a squalid suburb whose narrow streets are filled with heaps of garbage.

She said her family has PoR cards but has still been subject to harassment: a brother-in-law and nephew were detained by local authorities for several hours before being released. Reuters could not independently verify her account.

When Majida fell ill earlier in October, her husband refused to help her pick up medication at a nearby pharmacy out of fear of detention.

“We don’t have a home or work [in Afghanistan],” she said. “Obviously, we think of Pakistan as our home, we’ve been living here for so long.”

Some Afghans are determined to try to find a way to remain in Pakistan, even if it means going under the radar.

A fourteen-year-old Afghan girl, who AFP has not named for security reasons, said she will stay in Pakistan as long as possible, despite not having legal papers.

“We are not going back home, because my education in Afghanistan would come to a grinding halt,” she told AFP in Peshawar.

“Our father has told us that if he is arrested by Pakistani authorities, we should not leave even then. Because we will have no life in Afghanistan.”

Several schools for Afghan students in Islamabad closed from Tuesday as families went into hiding, teachers told AFP.

Pressure in Afghanistan

Back in Afghanistan, the influx of returning migrants and refugees has exerted pressure on already limited resources that are stretched by international sanctions on the banking sector and cuts in foreign aid after the Taliban takeover.

The Afghan Ministry of Refugees says it intends to register returnees and then house them in temporary camps. The Taliban administration said it will try to find returnees jobs.

The unemployment rate more than doubled from the period immediately before the Taliban takeover to June 2023, according to the World Bank. UN agencies say around two-thirds of the population is in need of humanitarian aid.

“We had our own barbecue shop and meat shop here. We had … everything. We were guests here,” said 18-year-old Muhammad just before he boarded Azizullah’s bus back to Afghanistan.

“You should think of it this way: that the country is kicking out its guests.”

Header image: Afghan refugees arrive in trucks and cars to cross the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Chaman on October 31. — AFP