The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the subsequent civil war that plagues Afghanistan to date, have been the harbingers of terrible unrest and destitute in Afghanistan. As a result, thousands of Afghans have fled to safety in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which not only shares an extensive border with Afghanistan, but also holds strong ethnic ties with the primarily Pashtun country. To date, there is no consistent figure of Afghan refugees in Pakistan that the government stands by. Given that Afghan refugees have resided in the country for over 30 years, this nonchalance about their administrative status is part of a broader problem, wherein the political, legal, economic, and social position of Afghan refugees has consistently been neglected; discussed in ambiguous and substantive terms at best. Read about Afghan Girl.
Most figures estimate that there are about 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan, but it is plausible to claim that this number would increase significantly if undocumented refugees are also considered. As such, the Pakistani government has had no consistent policy to address the situation of Afghan refugees, with policies ranging from restricted mobility in refugee camps, voluntary and forced repatriation, legal and political restrictions, the provision of ambiguous residence permits, and a plethora of impractical and unfulfilled promises. Sadly, Afghan refugees are subject to a pervasive policy of neglect, one that expands from legal and political, to economic and social.
Politically, the major impediment that Afghan refugees have had to tackle with is ambiguity; at no point has the government been able to claim that it adopted a consistent policy, and at no point have any of these policies prioritized Afghan refugees over the interests of the government. As such, even the children of Afghan refugees born in Pakistan are not granted citizenship. While Prime Minister Khan promised to provide passports to these children after being elected, he quickly backtracked. At the moment, there is no mechanism through which an Afghan refugee can gain citizenship in Pakistan.
This is in line with a consistent call to repatriate Afghan refugees; politicians and the military alike have blamed Afghan refugees for terrorism in the country, even though there are no substantive linkages between the two. Even if there were, it would be no reason to send hundreds of thousands of innocent individuals fleeing from war back to the depths of desolation that they have escaped. In an interview that I recently conducted with an Afghan refugee in Sagiyan, Lahore, I was told that families travelled weeks to reach Pakistan, only to find out that they were unwelcome. Perhaps what exemplifies the gravity of forced repatriation was the story of a man who went back to Afghanistan in 2016, only to see his child getting shot in the hand two months later.
Most communities have a liaison, usually the head of their community, who communities with the Commissionerate of Afghan refugees; this individual is called upon to discuss changes in policy and add their own input into the decision-making process. This too, however, is largely ceremonial; their involvement rarely changes the views of the government, though it must be said that their connection to the Commissionerate does operate as a mechanism to communicate grievances.
While there is no official data on this, a brief set of interviews with Afghan refugees will tell you that refugee camps set up around the country are inadequate. Within the camps, refugees are not provided with anything beyond tents and water; they have to pay bills themselves and find employment to feed their families. Given that such employment is naturally scarce in a refugee camp, most refugees have no choice but to leave the camps to find meaningful employment. Once they leave camps, bereft of any sort of support from the government, they are exposed to a variety of vulnerabilities that exemplify the tremendous neglect and ignorance that they are subject to.
Fundamentally, most of the economic conditions that Afghan refugees are subject to stem from governmental decision-making. Afghan refugees are given a refugee card, not any official form of citizenship, so access to employment or business opportunities is restricted. They cannot get driving licenses, loans, or make bank accounts, and have little-to-no access to education, healthcare, or municipal services. Most healthcare and education services available to Afghan refugees are provided by NGOs or UN agencies; the Pakistani government has provided little to no services in this regard. Naturally, prospects of vocational training, or group-specific industry development, are distant dreams.
Formal neglect, however, is not the entirety of the story. Afghan refugees are subject to various forms of economic discrimination. They are charged more at hospitals, paid less at jobs, and regularly required to pay bribes for menial administrative work. This stems from their ambiguous and thus vulnerable legal position in the country: they have no concrete form of citizenship; even those who have refugee cards cannot perform basic functions such as filing a case, and thus are exposed to a variety of oppressions that further dampen any hopes for economic independence.
Perhaps the most significant, day-to-day oppression that Afghan refugees are subject to stem from their social position in Pakistani society. Popular narratives present Afghan refugees as the harbingers of terrorism in the country, which opens up a variety of avenues for social oppression. The most damning of these is police brutality; most Afghan refugees will not tell you that they are Afghan refugees, because this subjects them to increased scrutiny, and often violence, from the police. Refugees have consistently complained about raids and arrests without warrants, forced disappearances, and brutality by the police, particularly in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in the country. This is compounded by harassment on police check posts, wherein refugees are habitually asked for bribes.
There is more to this oppression: Afghan refugees are spatially restricted to the outskirts of most cities; in Lahore, one of the major settlements of Afghan refugees is in Sagiyan, which is about an hour away from the center of the city. This is also the case in Karachi and other places with large populations of Afghan refugees, and their living conditions are distinctly marked with heaps of trash, vomit-inducing stenches, and scantily-built houses. Most refugees engage in trash-collection or menial labor, which is demeaning in and off itself, let alone when it is compounded with the casual discrimination that they are regularly subjected to. These oppressions, in no way, are helped by narratives that associate innocent and ailing refugees with terrorism in the country.
It is truly remarkable how the Pakistani government has consistently chosen to ignore the plight of Afghan refugees in the country. From political to social, to legal and economic, there is little to commend the government for. This article attempts to provide only a brief insight into the variety of oppressions that Afghan refugees are regularly subject to in Pakistan; there are many more forms of oppression and violence that they are subject to, all of which are further expounded by the ineptitude of the government. The life of an Afghan refugee in Pakistan is of pervasive uncertainty and instability, significantly amplified by the fact that their own country is subject to unending conflict.
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