KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — An 18-year-old was born and raised in Pakistan. His parents fled neighboring Afghanistan half a century ago. In Karachi he was at the mercy of the police, who confiscated his cash, his phone and his motorcycle and sent him to a deportation center.
Frightened and confused, he spent three days there before being sent back to Afghanistan, a place he had never been before, with nothing but clothes on his back.
The teenager is one of at least 1.7 million Afghans who made Pakistan their home as their country sank deeper into decades of war. But they live there without legal permission and are now the target of a crackdown on migrants who Pakistan says must leave the country.
Some 600,000 Afghans have returned home since the crackdown began last October, meaning at least a million remain in hiding in Pakistan. They have withdrawn from the public eye, given up their jobs and rarely left their neighborhoods for fear they might be next to be deported.
They find it more difficult to earn money, rent accommodation, buy food or get medical care because they risk being caught by the police or reported by Pakistanis to the authorities.
The teenager, who had worked as a mechanic in a car repair shop since he was 15, spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of arrest and deportation.
He has applied for the same documents as his family, but has not received them. Pakistan does not issue papers to Afghan refugees or their children.
“My life is here. I have no friends or family in Afghanistan, nothing,” the young man told The Associated Press. “I wanted to return (to Pakistan) sooner, but the situation had to calm down first,” he said, referring to the anti-migrant crackdown that was sweeping the country at the time.
When he entered Afghanistan, Taliban authorities gave him 2,500 Afghanis ($34) to start a new life. They sent him to the northeastern province of Takhar, where he slept in mosques and religious schools because he didn’t know anyone he could stay with. He spent his time playing cricket and football and borrowing other people’s phones to call his family.
Six weeks later, he traveled from Takhar to the Afghan capital Kabul and then to the eastern province of Nangarhar. He walked for hours in the dark before encountering people smugglers hired by his brother in Pakistan. Their job was to take him to Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, for $70.
He is relieved to be reunited with his family. But he is vulnerable.
Police have taped numbers on houses in his neighborhood to show how many people live there and how many have papers. Hundreds of Afghan families have fled the area since the operation began. There are fewer people to hide among.
Tens of thousands of Afghans easily live in such neighborhoods in Karachi. But they have neither drainage systems nor health or educational facilities. There are few women on the streets, and those who do venture out wear burqas, often the blue ones more commonly seen in Afghanistan.
Lawyer Moniza Kakar, who works extensively with the Afghan community in Karachi, said there are generations of families without paperwork. Without it, they have no access to basic services such as schools or hospitals.
Afghans were already under the radar before the crackdown, and there are rumors that Pakistan wants to expel all Afghans, including those with papers. Pakistan says no such decision has been taken.
In another Karachi neighborhood with a predominantly Afghan population, people disperse when the police arrive and disappear into a maze of alleys. A network of informants spread the news about the visits.
Kakar is desperate about the fate of the Afghans remaining in Pakistan. “Sometimes they don’t have food, so we appeal to the UN to help them,” she said. In the past, they would have traveled from such neighborhoods to the heart of Karachi to earn money or get medical attention, but they can no longer afford these trips. They would also likely be arrested, she added.
Some show Kakar their ID cards from the era of General Zia Ul-Haq, the military dictator whose rule over Pakistan coincided with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. “They wonder why they no longer have citizenship after 40 years. They do not share their location. They don’t go out. You live in a property that has been rented in someone else’s name.”
There are children born in Pakistan who have grown up and have children of their own. “The children have no identification papers. They all have an uncertain future,” Kakar said.
Syed Habib Ur Rehman works as a media coordinator at the Afghan Consulate General in Karachi. He spends a lot of time in these communities.
“There are empty houses, empty shops,” Rehman said. “The markets are empty. The Pakistanis we know do not agree with what is happening. They say they had a wonderful life with us. Their business has declined because so many Afghan families have left.”
The Afghans interviewed by the AP had different reasons for never securing their status. Some said they worked abroad. Others didn’t have time. Nobody thought Pakistan would ever throw them out.
Mohammad Khan Mughal, 32, was born in Karachi and has three children. Before the raid began, the Afghan ran a tandoor business. The police told him to close.
“My customers started complaining because they couldn’t buy bread from me,” he said. To escape the raids, he and his family fled to the southwestern city of Quetta in Balochistan province.
He returned to Karachi a few days later and has no intention of leaving the country.
“This is my home,” he said with pride and sadness. “This is my city.”
___
Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration