ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Pakistani media is reporting that only 200,000 out of 1.7 million Afghans illegally residing in Pakistan left the country voluntarily. A massive crackdown is expected against the rest of them as the interim government has a firm view of cleaning Pakistan from illegally living foreigners.
The Interior Minister Sarfaraz Bugti categorically stated that no extension would be announced in the deadline and all foreigners irrespective of their origins have to leave Pakistan.
Interim Government is facing criticism from certain political parties as well as from some civil society organizations. Religious organizations and political parties such as JUI and Jamaat-e-Islami have always had a soft image of refugees and a soft viewpoint favoring Afghans to keep living in Pakistan. It may be due to their vote-bank because millions of Afghanis have bought/procured Pakistani identification cards and passports illegally and they may be registered voters supporting religious parties. Moreover, illegal Afghanis studying in Madrasas (religious schools) are a major street force of religiopolitical parties for street protests whenever necessary.
Another possible reason is purely economic as many important political leaders are directly or indirectly involved in Afghan-transit trade that volumes billions of rupees annually. The checks and balances on Afghan transit trade can play havoc with their illegal businesses (Afghanis consider smuggling a legal business and call it Karobar. Hundi, Hawala, weapon trade, etc are businesses, not anything illegal for them). Therefore, any action against illegal Afghans crossing the Pak-Afghan border does not suit the powerful strata of KPK society.
Pakistan is facing an economic terrorism kind of situation due to the massive outflow of foreign currency to Afghanistan as well as facing food security issues due to the massive smuggling of edibles like wheat, sugar, meat, vegetables, etc. The recent crackdown over smuggling testified that the majority of culprits arrested in cases of USD$ smuggling and edible smuggling were illegally residing in Afghans. Therefore, the government decided to clamp down on this networking, resulting rise in the value of Pakistani currency and a lowdown in the price of edibles because Pakistan’s supply chain was hit by heavy smuggling of products to Afghanistan. Several International researches indicate that Financial Terrorism (also known as Economic Terrorism) is a secret manipulation of a nation’s economy by state or non-state actors. Moreover, Afghans living illegally or coming from Afghanistan were found involved in terroristic attacks against ports and land borders (attacks in and around Gwadar Port, and Karachi Port,) causing extra measures to be implemented to ensure the safe arrival and departure of the products and these measures force the cost of exporting and importing goods to increase. Pakistan is the most affected by this kind of terrorism because the slowing of exports and imports has affected the country’s ability to combat poverty. Disruption and pilferage of the edible supply chain were increasing poverty due to price hikes. This situation can cause revolts among the population and possible political destabilization, forcing an even greater increase in poverty in Pakistan.
Several post-Afghan Jihad researches indicate that since 1979, economic growth has not picked up and Pakistan continues to be a serious victim of terrorism, including foreign-sponsored terrorism from the immediate neighborhoods. There is no doubt that Pakistan fought back and reclaimed its writ in troubled areas bordering Afghanistan through several military operations against terrorists from 2003 to 2018 but almost everything went down to drain when the PTI government through a negotiation with terrorists resettled TTP terrorists inside the country after Afghan Taliban reclaimed government in Kabul in August 2021.
