By Ellaha Rasa
Mubareka Akbari protested against the Taliban when they returned to power in Afghanistan. Eight months ago, she fled in fear for her life to Pakistan. Now she is in hiding with her seven-year-old daughter.
She doesn’t know if her husband is alive or dead. He disappeared soon after the Taliban took Kabul in August 2021. He had been a member of the Afghan security forces.
“I and thousands of other women have taken refuge here [in Pakistan] to save our lives;” the 30-year-old says. “But now the government of Pakistan is forcefully deporting us without setting a deadline.”
Without the legal documents to stay in Pakistan, Mubareka knows she is a prime target to be sent to Afghanistan with her daughter. But she is afraid of what awaits her when she returns.
Pakistan’s blanket deportation policy
Pakistan’s government announced in October that an estimated 1.7 million undocumented Afghans are to return to Afghanistan. Islamabad has also ordered landholders not to rent rooms or homes to Afghans.
Sources say that more motels and inns have been refusing letting rooms to Afghans out of fear of the Pakistani police.
“Most of the time, I was not inside the house I rented. But as soon as I found out about the search for immigrants by the Pakistani police, if I leave my house, I go to the areas where fewer Pakistani soldiers are patrolling,” she says.
Mubareka claims there are still loopholes and people are paying off police to stay.
“One of the immigrants I know was searched by the Pakistani police for not presenting valid immigration documents and he had to give 100,000 Pakistani rupees [almost two months salary or US$350] to the Pakistani police not to be deported,” she says.
Over 300,000 people have returned to Afghanistan in recent weeks, according to Afghan authorities.
Human rights groups including Amnesty International have called on Pakistan to immediately stop the process deportations and persecution of Afghan immigrants, many of whom have lived their whole lives for more than one generation in the country.
Women’s rights activists who went to Pakistan to flee brutal Taliban punishments and retribution for protesting have also called on Pakistan for mercy.
Former Afghan prosecutors felt unsafe under Taliban rule
Former Afghan lawyer Shirin Faizi, 57, is living in a remote area of Islamabad city because home owners are no longer comfortable renting to Afghans without valid documents.
“With the cooperation of a Pakistani resident, I rented a three-room house. But it lacks basic facilities such as drinking water and gas,” Shirin says.
photo: submitted to Rukhshana media.
She says many of Afghan immigrants she knows are not leaving their rooms or homes out of fear of being caught and deported.
“Imagine when we cannot go to work, how will we find the expenses for rent and food for our family?” she asks. “Living conditions for immigrants in Pakistan have become very difficult.”
Shirin is regionally from Farah province in western Afghanistan and worked for five years in the Afghan Attorney General’s Office. At the height of her work, she was appointed to the General Prosecutor’s Office and helped prosecute some of the most heinous cases of violence against women in her hometown. She says it made her a target.
When the Taliban returned to power, she no longer felt safe. She sold all her assets in Afghanistan and on April 15 2022 she fled to Pakistan. If she returns to Afghanistan, she will have nothing and nowhere to live.
It has been about four months since her residence visa expired. Despite attempts to extend, her and her family have been refused, and they have no been able to access visas on the black market as others have done.
Some of the Afghans refugees are in Pakistan to reach other countries.
Sabria*, 32, also worked as a prosecutor on crimes of violence against women. She prefers not to mention where she is from, but after the fall of the Ghani government, she fled her hometown and took refuge in Kabul.
Despite her terror, as time passed she felt she couldn’t remain silent. So in early 2022, she secretly established a women’s protest movement called “Window of Hope”. She hosted three meetings at her home about the Taliban’s tyranny in her home.
But soon, her work as a protester and women’s rights organiser caught up with her. With other women being rounded up by Taliban forces and detained, Sabria feared not as much that she would be caught, but that her real identity as a former prosecutor would be revealed. She decided Kabul was no longer safe and in August 2023, Sabria left for Pakistan..
“After news of a protest in my house went viral on August 6 and the burning of the Taliban flag, I learned through my neighbors that the Taliban was trying to arrest a woman protester who had been there. I left Afghanistan that evening wearing a burqa,” she says.
Sabria’s Pakistan visa expired on November 1.
“I have applied for a visa extension twice,” she says. “But for unknown reasons, my requests have been rejected. If they [police] come to my gate, I have no documents to show.”
Women protestors prefer difficulties as refugees than Taliban rule
Tahira Naseri, 27, the founder of the Women’s Protest Movement Towards Freedom, felt similarly forced to leave Afghanistan for her safety after a number of street and home protests, conferences and media against Taliban policies.
Tahira fled in February 2022, using the all-covering black hijab and face mask to pass through Taliban checkpoints to reach Pakistan. But she says the situation has been extremely difficult.
“Life in Pakistan has brought many negative changes for me and my son,” she says. “I don’t know how long I must deal with this situation. Thousands of protestors and women’s rights activists have been forced like me to choose to save their lives and take this path, despite the constant threat of imprisonment and harassment.”
Tahira says the human rights organizations working on immigration seem indifferent towards the plight of Afghans fleeing the Taliban. Many times she has contacted the United Nations office but has had no concrete support or direction so far.
Protestor Zohra Wahedi Akhtari, 36, says she fled Afghanistan in the face of threats.
“It’s been 17 months since I came to Pakistan with my family of seven because of security threats,” she says. “My visa has expired, and I have not succeeded in extending my visa with my requests.”
Zohra says she was arrested and imprisoned twice by Taliban forces after participating in street protests in Kabul. Fears of being detained a third time forced her to leave.
“First was during the street protests on September 2 2021. I and a group of women protesters were imprisoned in the basement of Azizi Bank. I had to sign a Taliban letter that I wouldn’t participate in the protests or talk to the media,” she says.
“Later I was detained again and tortured and harassed in the Taliban prison for three days from November 15 to 17 because I did not comply with that commitment.”
Zohra has been living in poverty for nearly two years since she fled to Pakistan. But despite that, she fears the return to Afghanistan more. She says the risk of being deported and returning to the Taliban’s restrictions is a great strain on her and many hundreds of other women.
“During the past eight months, we’ve participated in protests day and night with our family members to make our voices heard, to inform the United Nations and immigrant-receiving countries, but we haven’t received any positive answer, and in the end, our efforts ended with the violence of the police, and they forced us to leave the area,” she says.
Despite widespread condemnation of the mass expulsions, the Pakistan government is pressing ahead with its policy and forcibly returning hundreds of refugees to Afghanistan every day.
It has responded to international criticism with some concessions, saying that Afghans who are waiting for resettlement in other foreign countries will not be deported.
Some names have been changed for safety reasons
