Afghans living in Pak’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province directed to leave country immediately

Peshawar, Aug 2 (PTI) Afghan citizens living in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have been directed to leave the country without delay as their Proof of Registration cards expired on June 30.
     The Home Department of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government issued a notification on Friday, urging all Afghan citizens residing in the province holding Proof of Registration (PoR) cards to return to Afghanistan, in compliance with guidelines from the Federal Ministry of Interior.
     The official notification states that the stay of Afghan nationals in Pakistan, with PoR cards expired on June 30, 2025, will be considered illegal. It adds that the Ministry of Interior had finalised the repatriation decision for PoR cardholders on July 31, 2025, and no further extension in their stay will be granted.
     It further clarified that Afghan nationals residing in Pakistan without valid passports and visas have no legal status, and all such individuals will be categorised as illegal immigrants after June 30.
     The Home Department has instructed PoR cardholders to proceed immediately to designated transit points in Peshawar and Landi Kotal to facilitate their formal repatriation.
     More than a million Afghans have left Paki­stan since November 2023, when the drive to repatriate them was launched. These include more than 200,000 since April this year itself.
     The campaign targeted the more than 8,00,000 Afghans with temporary residence permits, some of whom were born in Pakistan or have lived here for decades.
     Pakistan has witnessed a series of terror attacks in recent years and has openly said it suspects the involvement of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a splinter group of Afghan Taliban.
     Last year, Pakistan recorded the highest number of casualties from attacks in a decade, with the government often blaming Afghan nationals for them.
     The deportation drive first launched in 2023 was renewed in April this year when the government rescinded hun­dreds of thousands of residence permits for Afghans, warning them of arrests if they did not leave.
     In the 1980s, millions of Afghans fled to neighbouring Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of their country. The numbers witnessed a spike after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021.
     An estimated 1.7 million Afghans, including almost 1.4 million Afghans registered as refugees, had been living in Pakistan when authorities announced its nationwide crackdown, saying that anyone without proper documents had to leave the country by October 31, 2023 or else get arrested.
     The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province shares an international border with Afghanistan to the west and clubbed with hilly terrain, has seen large scale Afghan migrants.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)