Under the harsh glare of floodlights, the police told women to stand to one side of their homes and demanded the men present immigration papers proving they were living in Pakistan legally.
The police raid on Friday in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, followed an abrupt decision by the Pakistani authorities last week to deport the more than one million Afghan migrants living illegally in the country.
On Tuesday, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry announced that migrants residing illegally in the country had 28 days to leave voluntarily, and it offered a “reward” for information leading to their arrests once that deadline passed.
On one side of the contested border, the Taliban administration in Afghanistan is armed with a vast arsenal of American-made weapons left during the U.S. withdrawal and feels encouraged by its victory over a global superpower.
In a news conference on Tuesday, the Pakistani caretaker government’s interior minister, Sarfraz Bugti, asserted that Afghans were involved in 14 of the 24 major terrorist attacks in Pakistan this year.
Now, with the government facing dueling economic and political crises, it is unclear how the Pakistani authorities would repatriate such a large number of refugees, a deportation campaign requiring substantial personnel as well as military and intelligence resources.
The original article contains 1,308 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!