Pakistan has decided to mass deport illegal Afghan migrants living in the country, after it emerged that the majority of this year's suicide bombings have been carried out by Afghan nationals. According to the international V4NA news agency, the Pakistani government has already formally ordered an estimated 1.73 million Afghan nationals living unlawfully in the country to leave by the end of October. It issued a warning that otherwise they will be located, detained and forcibly deported.
They're given a deadline, which expires on 1 November. The question is not whether we are being attacked from inside Afghanistan, or whether Afghan citizens are taking part in attacks against us. We have evidence,
– Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said. In 2023, 14 of the 24 suicide bombings recorded in Pakistan were carried out by Afghan terrorists. More than a third of the 4.4 million Afghan citizens living in Pakistan are in the country illegally.
Last week, at least 57 people, including seven children, were killed in two suicide bombings at two mosques in Pakistan, and at least one of the attackers was an Afghan national. Dozens were wounded in the bombings.
After the Taliban reemerged and took power in Afghanistan, the country's political life became increasingly unstable and tensions in the region grew. This prompted a Pakistan-based Taliban militant group to withdraw from the ceasefire agreement it reached with the government last year.
However, the Taliban in Afghanistan deny Islamabad's claims that Afghan territory, particularly in the mountainous border areas between neighboring countries, is being used as a training ground by militants. They insist that Pakistan's security concerns are merely a domestic political issue.
Cover photo: Shoes at a mosque, where a suicide bomber blew himself up during a religious festival in the Mastung district of northwestern Balochistan province, on September 29, 2023. Of the hundreds of people celebrating Prophet Muhammad's birthday, at least fifty-eight were killed, and nearly seventy wounded. (Photo: MTI/EPA/Djavad Djalali)
