Pakistan is still carrying out its deportation operation to send illegal Afghans back to their country, with an official saying that more than 800,000 people were repatriated till yesterday (March 20).
The government of Pakistan has set a deadline of March 31 for illegal residents and people with Afghan citizen holders to leave the country. According to a report by Times of India, the official said that the administration will ensure that deportees are not mistreated during the process.
Proper arrangements for food and healthcare for people returning to Afghanistan have already been taken, the official added.
Some 600,000 Afghans have travelled to Pakistan since the Taliban took over and implemented their austere version of Islam.
Millions more came in the four decades before that, fleeing successive conflicts including the Soviet invasion, civil war and the post-9/11 US-led occupation.
Pakistan, last year, waged a campaign to evict huge numbers of undocumented Afghans, as a result of which millions of migrants were forced to leave the country fearing arrests.
According to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, there are 2.18 million documented Afghan refugees in Pakistan. This includes the 1.3 million refugees holding Proof of Registration (PoR) cards as per the census carried out in 2006-07, as well as an additional 8,80,000 refugees granted ACCs following a registration drive in 2017.
Content retrieved from: https://www.firstpost.com/world/march-31-deadline-near-pakistan-says-repatriated-800000-afghans-living-illegally-in-country-13873464.html.
