Pakistan Orders Afghans Out
More than 20,000 Afghans, living in Pakistan’s tribal region, have left their homes, and returned to Afghanistan in recent weeks. The mass emigration came after the Pakistani government told these Afghans to leave. Islamabad believes that many of them are actively supporting and sheltering Taliban and Al Qaeda militants with whom government troops are engaged in a fierce battle.
Spokesmen for the Afghan population of the Bajur tribal region say their fellow Afghans are innocent, but the Pakistani government and United States government both believe this to be a lie.
According to Bacha Khan, a police official at the Toorwandi border post in Bajur, 20,000 Afghans living in Bajur had returned to Afghanistan in recent weeks, without thousands more moving to other regions of Pakistan.
If these Afghans would not leave voluntarily, Islamabad said, they would be deported.
An Afghan community leader in Khar, Bajur’s main town, asked the government to help Afghans who want to leave. “We are poor people, and we don’t have enough money to pay for the buses,” he said. As such, they could use financial help, he argued.
Iqbal Khattak, a government official in Khar added that 45 Afghans were arrested in recent days, and that some Afghan-owned shopped have been closed.
Although the United States and Pakistani government are mostly happy with the mass emigration it is a massive problem for the Afghan government, which has trouble enough as it is to establish its authority in large parts of the country.
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