Key points:
- Islamabad and Rawalpindi police carry out raids on illegal Afghans
- Operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa postponed until April 10
ISLAMABAD: As Pakistan moves ahead with its planned deportation of Afghan nationals by launching a crackdown on individuals without legal residence permits, the interim Taliban-led Afghan government has requested to defer the deportation of Afghan nationals.
“Mawlavi Abdul Kabir, the country’s (Afghanistan’s) Minister of Refugees and Repatriation, has urged neighboring countries to halt these deportations and allow Afghans to return home voluntarily,” Bakhtar News Agency, a Kabul-based media outlet, reported on Tuesday.
On the other hand, Urdu service of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has also reported that the Islamabad and Rawalpindi police separately carried out raids in Tarnol, Bhara Kahu, and Fauji Colony, rounding up dozens of Afghan nationals illegally residing in Pakistan.
On the other hand, the deportation operations of Afghans have been postponed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa—the northwestern province of Pakistan hosting the largest chunk of Afghan refugees—till April 10 due to the Eid al-Fitr holidays.
Amid rising tensions between the Pakistani and Afghan governments at the Torkham border on February 21 this year and following terrorist attack on Bannu Cantt, Pakistan set a deadline of March 31, 2025, for Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) holders. Proof of Registration (PoR) cardholders have the deadline until June 30, 2025.
Afghan population in Pakistan
According to data from the Afghan Commissionerate, there are 2,263,376 Afghan citizens in Pakistan holding either ACC or POR cards. Among them, 1,111,089 reside in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 636,305 in Balochistan, 302,014 in Punjab, 146,339 in Sindh, 59,609 in Islamabad, and 8,020 in Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. Meanwhile, there are 1,304,650 Afghan citizens in Pakistan with Proof of Registration (POR) cards.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa hosts the largest number of PoR-holding Afghans, totalling 751,293. It is followed by Balochistan with 369,929, Punjab with 202,190, Sindh with 80,409, Islamabad with 42,033, and Azad Jammu Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan with 4,512.
The total number of Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) holders stands at 813,010, including 434,148 men and 378,862 women. The majority—44 per cent (359,796 individuals)—reside in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with 187,545 men and 172,251 women.
In Balochistan, 33 per cent reside, totalling 266,376 people. This is followed by 99,824 people (12 per cent) in Punjab, 65,930 (8 per cent) in Sindh, 17,576 (2 per cent) in Islamabad, 3,500 in Azad Kashmir, and just eight in Gilgit-Baltistan.
An additional 145,716 unregistered individuals bring the total Afghan nationals residing staying in Pakistan to 2,409,092.
Understanding PoR & ACC
After the war between Afghanistan and Russia in 1979, Afghan nationals were given the status of Afghan refugees, but Pakistan—not being a signatory to the 1951 United National Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol—withdrew the refugee status in 2000.
Until 1995, Afghan citizens resided in various refugee camps in Pakistan. Yet, after certain camps were abolished, many refugees dispersed into cities. Despite this, Pakistani authorities did not maintain accurate data on their population or whereabouts.
Therefore, in 2005, a joint census of Afghan citizens was conducted by the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan along with the UNHCR. In 2006, those identified in the census were issued Proof of Registration cards, which was a one-time facilitation.
Since 2006, there has been a floodgate of Afghan migration into Pakistan due to unhindered cross-border movement at the Pak-Afghan border. However, they remained unregistered, as the Pakistani government had made it clear that the issuance of PoR cards would never be repeated.
According to Pakistani authorities, this became a significant security threat to Pakistan, as the government lacked data on the hundreds of thousands of Afghans residing illegally within its borders. The established link to Afghanistan in the tragic Army Public School (APS) attack in December 2014—where over 150 people, mostly children, were killed—served as a glaring example of this looming threat.
Subsequently, under the National Action Plan—devised in the backdrop of the APS tragedy—Pakistani authorities registered illegally-staying Afghan nationals and issued them Afghan Citizen Card in 2017, instead of relaunching Proof of Registration (PoR) cards.
