Political situation in Pakistan

16-year-old Sarfraz is forced out of Pakistan: "We are poor people" 

Pakistani authorities have intensified the work to deport the Afghan citizens who are in the country, several media reports. 

 

The 16-year-old schoolboy Sarfraz testifies that he and his family were forced to leave Pakistan, even though they see the country as their homeland.  

 

- There are no jobs here. We are poor people. We have been forced here, Sarfraz told Reuters on the Afghan side of the border in the town of Torkham.  

 

According to Sarfraz himself, it was his grandfather who moved from Afghanistan to Pakistan. Neither Sarfraz nor his father have ever been to what is technically their home country, according to Reuters.

 

Aid organizations are now warning that the situation at the border is critical. They believe that Afghanistan's Taliban government is unable to meet the needs of food and medicine for the up to 4 million Afghans who were in Pakistan and are now being expelled. 

 

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Analysis: Afghans are made a scapegoat for all problems 

Pakistan's decision to deport 1.7 million Afghans could have devastating consequences, writes Michael Kugelman in an analysis in Foreign Policy. The deadline to leave Pakistan expired at the end of the month and now the Afghans who have not yet left are being arrested and deported.  

 

Kugelman writes that the Taliban in Afghanistan are not ready to accept the returnees. Already today, 15 million people in Afghanistan are affected by an acute food shortage, so the returnees will now be faced with a humanitarian crisis. For Kugelman, it is clear that Pakistan is trying to make the Afghans "scapegoats" for the country's many problems. 

 

He is supported by Hameed Hakimi, an expert at the Chatham House think tank. He tells Time Magazine that Pakistan has for many years blamed its problems on the Afghans. It becomes especially clear now that the country is at its "historic low point", he says.  

 

Pakistan is struggling with a weak economy, humanitarian crises, political instability and a wave of terrorist attacks. 

 

- Now is the time for the state to show that it is doing something about it. And the refugees seem to be a natural target, he says.