Pakistan-Afghanistan relations: going from bad to much worse
Pakistan-Afghanistan relations: going from bad to much worse
WRITTEN BY CLAUDE RAKISITS
21 November 2023
Early last month, the government of Pakistan announced that all “unlawful residents” — read Afghan nationals — would have to voluntarily leave the country by the end of the year, originally set at 1 November. After that deadline, all remaining illegal migrants would be forcibly removed. This mass expulsion will worsen bilateral relations with Afghanistan — already at an all-time low — and will certainly not help resolve the growing scourge of terrorism in Pakistan.
While Islamabad insisted that the announcement had been misinterpreted and was not targeting any specific nationality, everyone knew who the government was targeting with this en masse eviction notice: an estimated 1.7 million Afghan nationals out of the 4 million Afghan refugees residing in Pakistan. As a matter of fact, within a few days, the government of Pakistan revealed its real motive behind the expulsion order. Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar stated: "After non-cooperation by the Afghan interim government, Pakistan has decided to take matters into its own hands — and Pakistan's recent actions are neither unexpected or surprising". He was referring to the Afghan Taliban government’s failure to agree to the repeated demands by Islamabad that Kabul rein in the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an internationally recognised terrorist organisation whose safe havens are in Afghanistan. Moreover, the prime minister stated that 15 recent suicide bombing terrorist attacks in Pakistan had been carried out by Afghan nationals. While this accusation is not plausible given that the TTP has its roots in Pakistan, this has not prevented the Pakistani government from shamelessly using Afghan refugees as a bargaining chip in its dealings with the Taliban.
The expulsion
Since this unexpected announcement, over 300,000 Afghan refugees have already crossed the border back into Afghanistan. With three new border crossings opened, the average number of Afghans crossing the border daily is about 15,000, compared to 300 before the expulsion order was given.
All in all, the expulsion en masse of the Afghan refugees will make things worse, bilaterally, and quite possibly, regionally. Certainly, no one’s security will improve; if anything, it will further destabilise Afghanistan already tottering on the brink of collapse.
This mass expulsion is happening when, according to UN agencies, Afghanistan is already on the verge of witnessing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Almost three-quarters of the Afghan population depend on aid handouts and 3.3 million people are internally displaced, many of them having lost their homes to the recent earthquakes. The Afghan reception centres for the refugees are filling up quickly and are seriously inadequate for dealing with the massive surge in arrivals. And to make matters even more desperate, this is happening as the harsh Afghan winter is about to arrive. There is anecdotal evidence that the Pakistani authorities are also harassing, beating, extorting, and evicting Afghan refugees who have all the required legal documents to stay in the country. In a recent statement, United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said he was “alarmed” by such reports. Moreover, there are severe restrictions on the transfer of cash or assets that Afghans can take out of Pakistan, where many have built businesses and homes over decades. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have been in Pakistan since 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to prop up the Marxist government in Kabul. A significant number of these soon-to-be-expelled Afghans have never lived in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has rejected all international calls, including from the UN, aid agencies and rights groups, to reconsider this mass expulsion of Afghans. The international community is particularly worried about the 600,000 Afghans who crossed over into Pakistan after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021. Several thousand of these recent arrivals had an association with the former Western-backed government and their lives are potentially in danger if they return to Afghanistan. Sending these individuals back is contrary to the principle of non-refoulement under international human rights law, which essentially states that no one should be returned to a country where they would face torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and other irreparable harm.
The Taliban’s acting commerce minister, Haji Nooruddin Azizi, met Pakistan’s foreign minister, Jalil Abbas Jilani, in Islamabad this week to discuss the crisis between the two countries and persuade him to stop the blanket expulsion. Pakistan did not change its position and instead, Jilani offered an economic carrot, stating that “full potential for regional trade and connectivity can be harnessed with collective action against terrorism”. However, this incentive is unlikely to persuade the Taliban to change its friendly policy towards the TTP. On the contrary, this expulsion decision, which was reportedly taken without any prior consultation with the Taliban government, will probably make the Taliban double down on its brothers-in-arms relationship with the TTP.
Afghanistan-based Pakistani terrorists
Notwithstanding Prime Minister Kakar’s misleading accusation that Afghan nationals are principally behind the terrorist attacks in Pakistan, since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban over two years ago, there has indeed been a substantial spike in terror attacks originating from across the border. According to the Pakistan government, there has been a 60 per cent rise in militant attacks in Pakistan and a 500 per cent rise in suicide bombings in which more than 2,200 Pakistanis have been killed. These figures are confirmed in a report by the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS). According to the CRSS, the number of fatalities from terrorist attacks in the two western provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan bordering Afghanistan has increased by 65 per cent since the Taliban take-over of Afghanistan. Put differently, these two provinces suffered 92 per cent of all national terrorist fatalities in the first eight months of 2023. And it is not only civilians who have suffered. According to the same report, losses among Pakistani security forces reached an eight-year high in the first nine months of 2023. At least 386 security personnel, including 137 members of the army, were killed during this period.
It is important to remember the origins of the TTP, the principal but certainly not the only non-state actor terrorising civilians and security forces in Pakistan. The TTP is an umbrella organisation of several local militias from the northwest region of Pakistan and was formed in December 2007. The Afghan Taliban, which had found refuge in Pakistan after its eviction from power in 2001, was effectively the midwife to the TTP’s birth. The TTP swears allegiance to the Emir of the Taliban, Hibatullah Akhundzada. Since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021, the TTP has found refuge in Afghanistan and has been launching attacks back into Pakistan from the safety of its bases in Afghanistan. Given the deep operational, ideological, and tribal links between the Taliban and the TTP, it is not surprising that Islamabad’s repeated request for Kabul to crack down on the TTP has fallen on deaf ears. Islamabad had naively expected that the Taliban would have been more receptive to its demands to crack down on the TTP given that respective Pakistani governments had supported the Taliban for some 30 years, including during the 20 years when NATO and other western forces were in Afghanistan. Many of the Taliban members had been educated in the Madrasas (Islamic seminaries) of Pakistan.
Another internationally recognised terrorist group, which has also found refuge in Afghanistan, is the Baluch Liberation Army (BLA). The BLA, which has operational links with the TTP, has conducted many high-profile terrorist attacks against Pakistani and Chinese assets, principally, but not solely, in Balochistan over many years. Islamabad is particularly worried about the BLA’s regular attacks against Chinese workers and officials involved in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects, which have put a strain on Pakistan-China relations. Accordingly, Islamabad has asked Kabul to move against the BLA, but the Taliban has been unwilling or unable to do so.
While the TTP and the BLA are the highest profile and most recognisable violent non-state actors in Pakistan, the militants’ network is not only highly complicated, extensive, and spread over the entire Afghan-Pakistan landscape, but existing groups regularly metamorphose into new groups or splinter factions.
Possible ramifications
The planned expulsion of 1.7 million Afghan refugees, representing about 0.7 per cent of the total population of Pakistan, is callous, inhumane, and will be counterproductive. It will certainly have little impact on the rising terrorist attacks in Pakistan. This could potentially become the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. But up to now, it has gone virtually unnoticed because the media and foreign governments have been focussing on the disaster unfolding in Gaza and the war in Ukraine.
However, this mass expulsion of Afghan refugees has gone down very well in Pakistan. According to a recent poll, a staggering 84 per cent of the people surveyed support the expulsion. The poll also confirmed the far-reaching antipathy towards Afghan nationals in general. Accordingly, the illegal Afghan refugees issue is a perfect opportunity to distract attention away from the government’s underachievements in dealing with the myriad economic problems, including high inflation, high unemployment, political instability, and a tough IMF bailout programme. Finding a convenient scapegoat is particularly useful given that the government will be going to the polls on 8 February 2024 as the underdog, with jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan still the favourite to win were he allowed to run.
All in all, the expulsion en masse of Afghan refugees will make things worse, bilaterally, and quite possibly, regionally. Certainly, no one’s security will improve; if anything, it will further destabilise Afghanistan already tottering on the brink of collapse. And if Afghanistan did become a failed state under the sheer weight of all of its domestic problems, Pakistan would be the first to suffer, with most likely a new influx of Afghan refugees spilling over the border back into Pakistan from where they will have recently been expelled.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Dr Claude Rakisits is an Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Brussels-based Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He has been following South Asian issues for almost 40 years. Image credit: Flicker/ Hashoo Foundation USA.