Akber Khan is seeing a quick exchange in his restaurant in the city of Peshawar in northwestern Pakistani. Fan skewers of grilled meat staff and distribute rice and salad.
As Afghan, Khan should leave as part of a national offensive against foreigners that the Pakistani government says they live illegally in the country. But the only heat you feel is from the kitchen.
“I have the leg here for almost 50 years. I married here, so my children did, and 10 or my family members are buried here. That’s why we don’t want to leave,” he said.
Khan is one of the more than three million Afghan that Pakistan wants to expel this year. At least one third lives in the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and that is only those with documents such as an Afghan citizen card or registration test.
It is not clear how many undocumented Afghans are in the country.
The provincial government seems reluctant to repatriated Afghans. The mountainous terrain, sectarian violence and a variety of armed groups have also challenged the expulsion ambitions of the central government.
“Afghan can never be completed, as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa specials, since they return using illegal channels or exploit lagoons in the system despite the fencing on the border,” said Abdullah Khan, managing director of the Pakistan Institute. “Many villages along the border are divided between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and people in the last three or four decades were never prevented from visiting both sides.”
The proximity of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to Afghanistan, together with the shared ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties, make it a natural destination for Afghans. The province has organized significant numbers since the 1980s.
Many Afghan have been integrated, just getting married to premises. The region feels familiar and is easier to access through legal and illegal routes than other parts of Pakistan.
While the provincial government was cooperating with federal counterparts, the implementation of policies remained slow, said Abdullah Khan.
“The Government (local) sympathizes with Afghans for multiple reasons,” he said. “They share the same traditions and culture as the province, and former Prime Minister Imran Khan last his days in power constantly opposed coercive measures towards Afghan refugees.”
The authorities also distrust the riots, with the Afghans living in almost all cities, towns and peoples of the province.
Althehugh’s police were attacking houses in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and other cities in the province of Punjab and Sindh farther from the border, the “lack of aggressive application” was the main reason for the slow repatriation rate, said analyst Khan.
Pakistan pressure to change their minds, rights groups, aid agencies and the Taliban government of Afghanistan, could also be a factor.
Almost 60,000 people have crossed Afghanistan since the beginning of April through the border points of Torkham and Spin Bodak, said the United Nations migration organization for migration (IIM).
Many deportations recently have a leg of the east of Punjab, which is hundreds of kilometers from the border and the home of about 200,000 Afghan with documents.