This article focuses on the recent moves by both Pakistan and Iran to deport large number of Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan and seeks to analyse the issues associated with such a policy measure. It concludes that both countries need to adopt a humane approach to these refugees and encourage voluntary return rather than push them forcibly into a country where they are not sure of their future.
In late June 2024, Pakistan announced the second phase of forcible expulsion of undocumented Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan, despite having garnered severe domestic and international criticism over the process which was initiated in October 2023. Although the original declaration targeted all unregistered migrants, specifying no particular country, it was amply clear that it meant Afghan refugeesâ 4.4 million of whom lived in Pakistan at the time, out of which an estimated 1.73 million were undocumented, towards at whom this policy was directed. Around 5,41,000 Afghan refugees had already been forced out of the country during the first phase, and another 8 lakhs were supposed to be expelled in the second phase.
Needless to say, there were several wave of migration into neighbouring countries ever since Afghanistan was invaded by the former USSR in 1979, an event that unfolded a series of crises and conflicts in the region that continued long after the Cold War. As countries with deep historical and cultural affinities along the bordeers, i.e., Pakistan and Iran, became natural destinations for Afghans fleeing the conflict zone. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates, 7,50,000 registered Afghan refugees reside in Iran, with an approximate 2.6 million undocumented, although the Iranian media figures suggest that the real number could be around 6 to 8 million.
The withdrawal of the US and the ascendance of the Taliban in Afghanistan in August 2021 triggered the latest wave of exodus from Afghanistan. The haunting images of Afghans trying to climb up to the wing of an airplane with some falling to their deaths, in a desperate attempt to escape rather than live under the Taliban, cannot be forgotten. In the aftermath of that event, an estimated 6 to 9 lakh Afghans fled into Pakistan and about a million sought safety in Iran.
Just like Pakistan, Iran too has been intensifying its efforts to deport Afghan refugees, with the police chief Ahmad Reza-Radan announcing in September this year that around 2 million unregistered migrants would be expelled within the next 6 months. The expulsion drives in both these countries are rooted in domestic and geopolitical factors, and notwithstanding staunch protests from civil society and human rights groups, a significant proportion of the population in these countries supports such deportation. As per UN figures, since January 2023, over 1.5 million refugees have returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran. It must be noted that many of these refugees had been living in these countries for generations, and therefore, have never known what it means to live in Afghanistan.
Pakistanâs Security and Economic Rationale
This is not the first time that Pakistan has launched a concerted operation to drive out Afghan refugees. In 2016, following a surge in militant attacks and deteriorating political relations with Afghanistan, Pakistani authorities subjected Afghans residing in the country to deportation threats and administrative abuse in the form of extortion, raids, arbitrary detention, and harassment. The campaign, which the Human Rights Watch termed as âthe worldâs largest unlawful mass forced return of refugees in recent timesâ, forced out almost 3,65,000 registered and more than 2 lakh unregistered Afghans. This time around, like on the previous occasions, the Pakistani government has cited security and economic reasons to justify its actions.
The 2021 takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban coincided with the resurgence of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a militant group that had been responsible for several terror attacks in Pakistan, including the grotesque massacre of children at Army Public School, Peshawar, in 2014. A series of targeted operations by the Pakistani Army had severely flattened the TTPâs ranks and capacities, however, since 2021, the security situation in Pakistan has progressively worsened with an alarming rise in militant attacks, directed at both military and civilian targets, particularly in the two provinces neighbouring Afghanistan- Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. The Pakistani government routinely alleges that the Afghan Taliban provide haven to the TTP. However, this already dire situation turns even more problematic when the Pakistani government projects its anxieties related to the TTP and the Afghan Taliban onto the whole of its Afghan refugee population. An example of this is when Pakistanâs interim Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kaakar stated in November 2023: âA significant portion of those involved in criminal and terrorist activities are among these illegal immigrantsâ. This kind of grievously insensitive characterization of an extremely vulnerable people can potentially incite social hostilities against them and imperil their safety. Apart from this, there is also an economic dimension to Pakistanâs reasoning for its abuse of Afghan refugees. Confronting an unyielding economic crisis, the Pakistani government has allocated part of the blame to Afghan refugees who have allegedly put an overwhelming strain on the countryâs infrastructure and public services. As per some reports, the authorities made unregistered migrants pay an exit fee of $830 per head, which is over half the average annual income in the country.
Iranâs Rising Social Hostilities and Populist Rhetoric
When it comes to Iran, aside from its security concerns arising from the increasing cross-border attacks by the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP) over the past 3 years, its economic woes seem to be a prominent cause behind the hostilities that Afghan refugees in the country are faced with. In a country caught amid debilitating international sanctions, severe inflation, distressing living costs, unemployment and poverty, the immigrant population often becomes the scapegoat which the people and politicians point to for being responsible for their hardship. In addition to restricted access to public services such as healthcare, education and social security, and being largely relegated to the informal sector in the most laborious and unrewarding jobs, Afghan refugees in Iran also have to contend with increasingly antagonistic societal attitudes. Instances of police excesses to pressure the refugees to go back to Afghanistan have been making the news since the past year, exemplified by the viral video of an Afghan man pinned to the ground by an Iranian policeman, with his knee on his neck and reports of border guards opening fire on convoys of Afghan migrants. The Iranian government itself claimed to have expelled 1.3 million foreign nationals in 2023. This abuse of Afghan refugees in Iran is appallingly compounded by societal narratives that portray them as job-stealers, criminals, drug-smugglers, terrorists, and burdens on the already struggling economy. In recent times, these narratives have gained such potency that they have manifested in actual instances of violence against Afghansâ schools barring Afghan children from enrolment, protests demanding expulsion of Afghans, and social media campaigns with the hashtag âExpulsion of Afghans, a national demandâ.
Iranian politicians, on their part, instead of trying to ease these tensions, utilised them to stoke further nationalist and populist sentiments against the refugees, and held them as the reason for Iranâs socio-economic problems. Officials have used the language of âwarâ to describe their crackdown on undocumented migrants. In fact, the latest Iranian presidential election was the first wherein the issue of migrants was vociferously taken up and candidates from both conservative and reformist camps advocated complete border closures, deportation of unregistered migrants, and regulation of legal refugees. In May 2024, Iran announced its plan to construct a 4-meter high and 74-km long concrete wall, expanded with barbed wire fencing, along a known illegal border crossing point at Islam Qala on the Iran-Afghanistan border.
A Future of Uncertainty and Anxiety
After suffering decades of destruction through invasions, war, and terror, Afghanistan remains in an extremely precarious condition, in infrastructural, economic, and security terms. Ever since the Taliban took over the reins in the country in 2021, it has been dealing with an extreme humanitarian crisis, exacerbated by sanctions, international isolation, and massive cutbacks to international aid. To make matters worse, the Taliban has been increasingly placing restrictions on womenâ from banning girls from attending secondary school after grade 6 in 2021 to most recently, banning women from attending medical training for nursing and midwifery. In this context, the mass expulsion of Afghans by Iran and Pakistan back into Afghanistan is set to gravely burden an already overstressed system, leading them to destitution because of lack of access to shelter, job, healthcare, security of life, and an acute mental health crisis. Many of the returnees had been either associated with the outgoing government, or were activists or minorities, who, most certainly, face the risk of persecution, detention, torture, or execution upon their return. Women and children, who make up 71% of the Afghan refugees who had fled to neighbouring countries, would be the worst hit to be forced into a country wherein their future is utterly bleak and uncertain. Over the last year, Iran sent back over 20,000 Afghan children, a lot of whom were either unaccompanied or with no guardian waiting to receive them, according to the Taliban authorities.
International Obligations and the Need for Collective Response
Despite stern objections from the UN as well as the Taliban, Pakistan and Iran are bent on forcing the return of a significant segment of their Afghan refugee population, in violation of international legal norms and obligations. While Iran is a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, the same is not true for Pakistan. Nevertheless, Pakistan is a signatory to the UN Convention against Torture, Article 2(1) of which consists of principle of non-refoulement as per the the customary international law. This principle prohibits the expulsion of refugees to a place where they may face persecution, and both Pakistan and Iran are in egregious violation of the same. In addition to this, Pakistan is also part of a 2003 tripartite agreement with Afghanistan and the UNHCR that promises protection of, and provision of basic services to Afghan asylum-seekers and facilitation of their voluntary repatriation. However, Pakistan has no domestic legislation for the categorisation and protection of refugees, and Iran too does not have a comprehensive refugee policy. This domestic policy vacuum is, therefore, misused by both these countries to justify their forced repatriation of asylum-seekers in the name of security.Â
By promoting hostile narratives against Afghan refugees and expelling millions of them back into crises-torn Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran are utilising them as scapegoats to deflect accountability for their own failures on the security, economic, and humanitarian fronts. Pakistan seeks to achieve the added objective of putting pressure on the Taliban to retract its support for armed insurgent groups operating against Pakistan such as the TTP. Even if one attempts to take these countriesâ security and economic concerns in good faith, the act of forcing asylum-seekers back into the place they fled out of fear of death and persecution is exceptionally inhumane. Instead of using vulnerable people as scapegoats or tools to exert political pressure, Iran and Pakistan must work towards collective regional and international responses to this acute crisis.
Given the continued instability in Afghanistan, it is highly likely that the expelled refugees would attempt to find ways to re-enter these countries or look for other countries to migrate to. Simply deporting people by force and erecting a border fence will not sustainably resolve this extremely complex issue, and will only compel the Afghans to resort to exceedingly dangerous ways to escape. Therefore, a combination of measures, beginning with formulating a comprehensive domestic refugee policy in line with international norms, as well as collective regional and international endeavours to ensure viable reintegration of refugees in their home-country, are in order. Pakistan and Iran, which have hosted Afghans for decades and share historical and cultural closeness with them, must adopt a humane approach and immediately stop endangering the lives and livelihoods of these people, living on the margins.
Ms Ruchi Sharma is pursuing her Ph.D. at the Centre for West Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views expressed here are her own.
