Afghan Refugees op/ed by Ambassador Tariq Osman Hyder

[RescueRanger]

DEPORT them all........they are a security risk for the country.

DEPORT or throw em all in the indian ocean

They can return and help rebuild their country.

 

[Foinikas]

Afghan refugees Shayma, Zahra and Laylama speak to journalists at their residence in Islamabad.—AFP

The hellenic heritage is so obvious on the carpet

 

[Oldenwisdom...قول بزرگ]

They can return and help rebuild their country.

If anything they want their patrons to parachute them to one in the west. They ate the forbidden fruit and cannot believe the dream ended so abruptly. I do think the next democratic administration will fly them out...

 

[RescueRanger]

If anything they want their patrons to parachute them to one in the west. They ate the forbidden fruit and cannot believe the dream ended so abruptly. I do think the next democratic administration will fly them out...

How long will that be one wonders. The UNHCR and their patrons cannot expect Pakistan to function as an eternal transit station.

 

[Oldenwisdom...قول بزرگ]

How long will that be one wonders. The UNHCR and their patrons cannot expect Pakistan to function as an eternal transit station.

UN is being defunded. Any funds coming from there will seize, eventually.

 

[PAKISTANFOREVER]

View attachment 149072
Afghan refugees Shayma, Zahra and Laylama speak to journalists at their residence in Islamabad.—AFP

ISLAMABAD: In their Pakistan safehouse, Shayma and her family try to keep their voices low so their neighbours don’t overhear their Afghan mother tongue. But she can belt out Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” any time she likes, and no-one would guess it comes from a 15-year-old refugee in hiding.

“In the kitchen, the sound is very good,” she told AFP alongside her sister and fellow young bandmates.

By now, Shayma should have been testing the acoustics of her new home in New York.

But before her family’s scheduled February flight, US President Donald Trump indefinitely suspended refugee admissions, stranding around 15,000 Afghans already prepared to fly out from Islamabad.

Thousands more are waiting in the city for relocation to other Western nations, but shifting global sentiment towards refugees has diminished their chances and put them at risk of a renewed deportation drive by Pakistan, where they have long exhausted their welcome.

For girls and women, the prospect is particularly devastating: a return to the only country in the world that has banned them from most education and jobs.

“We will do whatever it takes to hide ourselves,” said Shayma’s 19-year-old bandmate, Zahra.

“For girls like us, there is no future in Afghanistan.”

Not a transit camp

After the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, tens of thousands of Afghans travelled to Pakistan to register refugee and asylum applications with Western embassies, often on the advice of officials.

Many had worked for the US-led Nato forces or Western NGOs, while others were activists, musicians or journalists.

Four years on, thousands are still waiting, mostly in the capital Islamabad or its outskirts, desperately hoping that one of the embassies will budge and offer them safe haven.

Hundreds have been arrested and deported in recent weeks, and AFP gave interviewees pseudonyms for their protection.

“This is not an indefinite transit camp,” a Pakistan government official disclosed on condition of anonymity. He said Pakistan would allow Afghans with pending cases to stay if Western nations assured the government that they would resettle them.

“Multiple deadlines were agreed but they were not honoured,” he added.

Love for music

Overcoming social taboos, Shayma and her sister Laylama attended the after-school lessons run by an American former arena rocker but had to move to Pakistan after Taliban returned to power.

One of 10 siblings, Laylama sold sunflower seeds to help support the family. She had cherished a stringless plastic guitar, until she encountered the real thing.

But fearing retribution from the Taliban government, which considers music anti-Islamic, Laylama’s father burned her guitar. “I cried all night,” the 16-year-old said.

Since they were smuggled into Pakistan in April 2022 to apply for refugee status with the United States, Shayma and her bandmates have had to move four times, driven deeper into hiding.

At the start of Pakistan’s crackdown in 2023, the US embassy provided the government with a list of Afghans in its pipeline that should be spared, according to a former staffer with the State Department’s Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts. That office, and the protections it offered, have been dismantled by the Trump administration.

“Leaving these refugees in limbo is not just arbitrary, it’s cruel,” said Jessica Bradley Rushing of the advocacy coalition AfghanEvac.

Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2025

Why can't they just F**k off from Pakistan and go to the west or wherever from their own country? Why drag Pakistan in to this? Pakistan is NOT their country. They need to go home.

 

[El Sidd]

Dawn should write for Bollywood.

 

[Dalit]

mostly in kpk that want afgandus to stay

You have no clue. People in KPK are extremely fed up with Afghans. More so than other cities and provinces of Pakistan.

I got good news. We received news that tons of Afghans were being repatriated from Chitral.

 

[RescueRanger]

The hellenic heritage is so obvious on the carpet

That's not a carpet its a chador, very popular in Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iran and Central Asia. They embroid/print all sorts of patterns on them.

 

[Foinikas]

That's not a carpet its a chador, very popular in Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iran and Central Asia. They embroid/print all sorts of patterns on them.

Ah,chador,we used to hear that word a lot on TV back in the 2000s with the war in Afghanistan,that and burqah.

 

[RescueRanger]

Ah,chador,we used to hear that word a lot on TV back in the 2000s with the war in Afghanistan,that and burqah.

There are two different types of Chador:
1. veil or wrap (both males and females use them)
Male

Female
[Can be draped over body or worn as a headscarf when praying]

2. The second kind is also called a Chador but is actually a drape for furniture and beds:

 

[Foinikas]

2. The second kind is also called a Chador but is actually a drape for furniture and beds:

Meandros patterns everywhere

 

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

Pakistan's softness towatd Afganistan is mind blowing. It's like kissing the hands and daggers of the assassins who have come to slit your throat. Very sad....

 

[Dalit]

Pakistan's softness towatd Afganistan is mind blowing. It's like kissing the hands and daggers of the assassins who have come to slit your throat. Very sad....

It is over bro. The Afghans know it too.

 

[hussain0216]

Jointly Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia needs to convince Talibans to remove restrictions on women especially education. There must be reconciliation between different Afghan parties. When the Northern alliance was in power did not want to talk with Talibans and now the Talibans in power, they don’t want to talk to Northern Alliance.

That's none of our business

Let the Afghans run Afghanistan as per their wishes, we just don't want the Afghans in Pakistan