Thousands of Afghan refugees have been queueing up daily at the border to leave Pakistan after Islamabad announced it would arrest illegal refugees in a latest push to accelerate the repatriation process, officials said on Monday.
More than 2.5 million refugees have left for Afghanistan since Pakistan began their forced repatriation from September 2023, the United Nation High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said.
“The number is rising now steadily,” UNHCR spokesman Qaiser Afridi told dpa on Monday.
The number of people to go home voluntarily has almost doubled since the government’s announced that it will arrest illegal Afghans from July 10, said Fazl Rabi, an official at the refugees ministry in the city of Peshawar.
Around a 1, 000 refugees used to cross into Afghanistan from Torkham, one of the two major crossings between the two countries, daily, Rabi said.
“The number has risen to 2, 5000 a day,” he added.
In the south-western province of Balochistan, the number of refugees crossing the Chaman border crossing has also doubled to more than a 1, 000 daily, refugees official Zakir Durrani said.
More than 3 million Afghans have lived in Pakistan for decades as refugees since late 1970s, according to official statistics.
Around a million crossed into Pakistan after the takeover of their country by the Taliban militia in 2021, official estimates suggest.
Pakistan government has decided to repatriate all the Afghan refugees, apparently to punish the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan for allegedly supporting Islamist militants behind cross border attacks.
The Afghan government is under pressure to accommodate millions of refugees returning not only from Pakistan but also from Iran.