By Elyas Ahmadi
Rasool* was in English class at an Islamabad private school when plain clothes Pakistani security forces arrived to detain him and three classmates. They were arrested without charge and taken to Adiala jail.
Twenty days later, Rasool, 18, was released, but he doesn’t know what happened to his classmates. He is also still unclear why he was detained.
“The police who arrested me did not allow me to talk,” Rasool said. “Whatever I said, they did not accept my visa, which is being renewed, and they took me to the same prison where Imran Khan was held.”
Rasool suspects he was being intimidated, along with thousands of Afghan immigrants to Pakistan, as the country ramps up efforts to expel Afghans.
In recent months, Afghans living in Pakistan have noticed an increase in arbitrary detentions and anti-migrant policies propagated by Pakistani security forces.
In October, the Pakistan government announced all 1.7 million Afghan refugees must leave the country by November 1.
The Islamabad Police’s Facebook page also called on residents to inform them if they see an “illegal immigrant”, and not to give or rent their homes or offices to illegal immigrants.
Rasool, who lives in the Barekho area of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, arrived only seven months ago from Afghanistan. His visa allowed him to stay for six months, and his visa was in the process of being renewed at Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior when he was arrested.
Rasool was also registered as a refugee with the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR. When he was arrested, he said the Pakistani forces did not give any value to his documents. “We showed them the [UN] token, they smiled and ignored it,” Rasool said.
Terrifying conditions in notorious Adiala jail
Thousands of Afghan refugees have been imprisoned without charge in the past two months. Many who are living in Pakistan legally have also been targeted and say they’ve been forced to pay bribes to the Pakistani police for their freedom.
Rasool said on his first night in Adiala – a maximum security jail for serious crimes – another 60 Afghan immigrants arrived as well.
The list of 8 Afghan refugees who were arrested on October 3 from a small area called Amanullah Road located in and taken to Adiala jail.
He said Adiala is semi-autonomous with prison guards having little control on what goes on inside the crowded jail cells.
“They didn’t write my age on my card because I didn’t say it. When a person is young and does not have a serious crime, he gets severely harassed by the prisoners,” Rasool said.
“Beatings and even rape is not out of the ordinary. There were more than 150 people in one room.”
To protect himself, Rasool said he tried not to interact with anyone inside the prison by not talking. If he did talk to other inmates about why he was imprisoned, he told them he had committed a serious crime. He never told anyone he was jailed for staying in Pakistan.
Afghan migrant Sohail*, 32, spent 15 days in Adiala jail. He was picked up by Pakistani police about a month ago when travelling home from G9/4 area to the immigrant neighborhood Barekho in Islamabad.
Sohail fled to Pakistan from Afghanistan in 2021 when the Taliban took power. He was a senior player in the national security forces in Ghazni province under the Ghani government.
He said conditions in the jail were frightening given the lack of control Pakistani security forces had over the inmates.
“It was too crowded and violent. God as my witness, the older prisoners did not allow us to sleep inside the room. Because of the dispute, the risk of death and injury was high,” Sohail said. “Some of them had life sentences, they were not bound to anything. For 15 days, we slept in the toilets at night.”
About 30 other Afghan immigrants were in the same jail cell as him, mostly refugees.
A public notice warning the residents of Islamabad not to accommodate Afghan immigrants in their homes. If they have Afghan tenants, they should be evicted from their homes. In this notice, the operation of Pakistani police against Afghan immigrants is also mentioned. In this announcement, all immigrants are mentioned, not the immigrants without legal documents. Submitted to Rukhshana Media
“There were those whose visas had expired, or who were not registered with the police or did not have visas,” Sohail said. “But almost all of them were registered with the UNHCR.”
Islamabad Police said in an October Facebook post that they had arrested 2,298 people in the past month.
According to interviewees, cases of large numbers of Afghan immigrants are delayed, keeping many in prison unless they can pay bail.
Two Afghans detainees told Rukhshana Media said that they spent at least 130,000 Pakistani rupees (USD$470) to hire a lawyer for their case to be brought before a judge. For those without money or other means like family to help them, they were left in the prison.
“There were many poor people who were always in the same place in the corner of the prison, waiting for relatives to come from Afghanistan, or from somewhere else to come. If not, they will stay there,” Sohail said.
Payments taken by force
Shekib*, 45, worked as a driver in Bagram with the American military before the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. He fled to Pakistan in fear for his life as local Taliban groups began to target former security force personal and those who had worked for the Americans, despite pledges of amnesty.
Shekkib said all his documents to live in Pakistan were in order, but he has still been forced to pay bribes to the Pakistani police.
“More or less, they will get the bribe. If you don’t pay, they just say, ‘Let’s go to prison’,” Shekib said. “People will pay for their lives because they don’t understand their language.”
He said it has many Pakistani soldiers force these bribes as soon as they recognize an Afghan person.
About two weeks ago, Shekib was travelling from Barekho to Stremil in Islamabad to visit a friend when he was stopped at a police checkpoint and forced to pay 4,000 pakistani rupees on the spot.
“They stopped my motorcycle. I showed him the code, visa, passport, and police registration,” he said. “Seeing that it was legal, he started to search. I had 4000 rupees in my pocket. They saw it. Finally, they said, ‘Let’s go to the jail’. I had to pay that money so they would leave me alone.”
Kazem, 27, arrived in Pakistan with a valid visa about a month ago. He had 35,000 rupees of cash with him, which the Pakistani border police tried to take during a baggage search. When he resisted, they put him under surveillance for three hours.
“I finally had to give 5,000 rupees so that they’d release me. After this, I will never again wear a vest with Afghan traditional clothes, because when they see it, they understand that I’m Afghan,” Kazoo said.
Homayun, 25, had a similar fear of being targeted. About a month ago, he was travelling to buy bread when he was interrogated by two Pakistani police soldiers about his documents.
“I told them, my house is near, my documents are at home. Both came home with me. They made an excuse on the police form that it was expired by two days, but legally there was no problem for up to seven days. Then they saw our [Afghan] neighbor. They interrogated him as well. Finally, they took 8,000 rupees from both of us,” he said.
Rahmatullah Shafaq now lives in Islamabad but used to work in Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior under the Ghani government. He left the country when the Taliban took control.
He said the Pakistani system was riddled with corruption.
“From the government to the judge, the lawyer, and the soldier – they all think with their pockets [money],” he said.
Rukhshana Media has contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Pakistan for an interview, but as at the time of publication, had not received a response.
A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Pakistan as the November 1 deadline for the Afghan refugees to leave has passed. Many have left whatever homes they had in Pakistan in fear of further reprisals by Pakistani forces if they remain.
Videos shared on social media show bulldozers destroying the mudbrick houses of Afghan refugees as the families watch on helplessly. While many Afghans fled to Pakistan after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021, there are many undocumented Afghans who have lived in Pakistan their lives and have no home to return to in Afghanistan.
While hundreds of thousands of Afghans have packed whatever belongings they can and headed to the border to cross into Afghanistan, others are still in Islamabad trying to find refuge at foreign embassies and consulates or the UN, saying there is no life for them in Afghanistan.
UNHCR estimates that as of October this year, there are 3.7 million Afghans living in Pakistan. Of these, around 700,000 people have arrived since the Taliban take-over of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021.
*Pseudonyms are being used at the request of the interviewees. Names without an asterisk* are real.
Note: Rukhshana Media has seen Rasool’s registration card at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. At the end of this sheet, the email address and telephone number of this office in Islamabad are included so that in case of any problem, it can be contacted; However, according to the interviewees, they cannot contact this office in times of need with continuous efforts and several hours.
