Pakistan’s government said it has reached its limit and cannot accept more Afghan refugees as the threat of violence looms in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials are demanding that the world make arrangements for the refugees inside Afghanistan, amid fears that millions of Afghans may be forced to flee into neighboring countries if fighting between Taliban and Afghan government forces intensified or deteriorated into a civil war.
“As a matter of fact, we are not in position to accept any more refugees,” Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf told VOA in a one-on-one interview.
Almost 3 million Afghan refugees, half of them unregistered, have been living in Pakistan since the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s and subsequent waves of violence and later a civil war, according to the U.N.
“We are willing to help but we are in no position to take in new refugees this time around. The international forces and the U.N. should make arrangements for them inside Afghanistan,” Yusuf said.
Yusuf said there needs to be an effort to prepare for the refugees, highlighting his government’s policy.
“If such a situation arises, then the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, should set up camps for the refugees on the Afghan side of the border,” he said.
At present, there are two key border crossings between Pakistan and Afghanistan — Chaman in Balochistan and Torkham in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — apart from several small trading points.
Of the 2,640-kilometer boundary with Afghanistan, Pakistan has fenced nearly 90% and deployed the army and the Frontier Constabulary, a militia under the federal interior ministry, to man it.
Pakistani authorities say they have been hosting millions of refugees even though they are not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1967 Optional Protocol for refugees.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday announced that the U.S. would complete the troop withdrawal in Afghanistan by August 31, nearly 20 years after the U.S. led an invasion of the country following al-Qaida’s attack on the U.S., September 11, 2001.
