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Afghan refugees come in the line of fire in fight against terror

By Fawad Ali Shah

KARACHI: Afghan refugees living in the outskirts of Karachi are the prime suspects for the security forces in the ongoing operation against terrorist elements in the city.

The refugees living in the mohajir camps have claimed that the police were arresting them without any charges. An elderly man living in an Afghan camp, Ameen Jan, told Daily Times that the police were patrolling the camps since last week and whenever they came across Afghans, they arrested them.

The Afghan nationals feel that the Pakistani authorities have declared all Afghan refugees as terrorists. The refugees claimed that they could not earn their livelihood by going to work at the carpet factories. The carpets manufactured there are exported to other parts of the country and abroad.

Interestingly, the police have been arresting Afghan refugees under the Foreign Act despite the fact that the Pakistani government, in collaboration with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has issued them registration cards, according to which most of them are legal immigrants under international and Pakistani law.

As per the UNHCR, 90,000 Afghans living in Sindh are registered. The number of registered Afghans in Karachi is around 20,000. However, the leaders of Afghan refugees have claimed time and again that the number of Afghan refugees in Karachi is more than 0.1 million and that the government and the UNHCR have failed to issue cards to the rest of the Afghans.

“We kept requesting them to register all of us, but our requests were ignored,” lamented Karachi Afghan Jirga General Secretary Moallam Tawoos, claiming that the Pakistani government was treating them badly.

He added that the police were arresting and physically and mentally torturing them even if they held their registration cards that have been issued by the Pakistani government.

He demanded the authorities, “We are guests here. Let us stay peacefully,” adding that they would leave as soon as democracy returns to their motherland. He believes that to show its efficiency, the police was arresting Afghan refugees and that the terrorists were local people. The refugees have criticised the role of the Afghan Consulate in the present scenario, saying that it was deaf-mute on the issue.

When this scribe contacted the Afghan Consulate, its public relations officer refused to comment on the issue. However, the police said that they were not targeting Afghan refugees, adding that the law enforcement agencies were only raiding on tip-offs and were arresting people involved in terrorist activities.

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