UNHCR chief meets Pakistan’s premier to discuss the Afghan refugees

ISLAMABAD: The head of the UN refugee agency and Pakistan’s prime minister held talks Tuesday about Afghan refugees living in uncertainty in Pakistan following the government’s anti-migrant crackdown that started last year as militants stepped up attacks on security forces.

That crackdown on undocumented Afghans in Pakistan was apparently recently put on hold, without authorities offering any explanation for this.

Pakistan has long hosted an estimated 1.7 million Afghans, most of whom fled during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of their country. More than half a million others escaped Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021, with thousands waiting in Pakistan for resettlement in the United States and elsewhere.

Since Pakistan’s widely criticized clampdown started last November, an estimated 600,000 Afghans have returned home. The undocumented Afghans are separate from refugees who have registered with the authorities and the UNHCR, though the crackdown has raised concerns among the refugee population as well.