LONDON – Pakistan is clear on its decision to cancel refugee status for all Afghans living in the country at the end of 2012. The international community desires Islamabad to review this policy. They have become a threat to law and order, security, demography, economy and local culture. Enough is enough, reported Guardian quoting Pakistan’s top administrator in charge of the Afghan refugee issue, Habibullah Khan, as saying.
Habib, Secretary of the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions, has said that Islamabad would not relent.
According to Guardian, pushing the refugees into Afghanistan would create a new crisis for that country, already struggling with an insurgency. The West is urging Pakistan to reconsider its policy, which puts it at odds with the United Nations and other international partners.
According to the paper, the international community and the Afghan government have no strategy prepared to deal with any such influx of people.
The paper says Pakistan has hosted Afghan refugees for over 30 years, after they fled the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, the horrors of the civil war, Taliban rule and the conflict triggered by the US-led invasion of the country in late 2001. There are currently 1.7 million Afghan refugees registered in Pakistan. More than half of them are under 18, of whom 630,000 live in camps. According to the paper, a further one million are estimated to be living in the country unregistered and therefore illegally.
The paper says Pakistan’s plans to cancel refugee status for all Afghans living in the country at the end of 2012 could displace some 3 million people, creating the world’s biggest cluster of refugees.