Pakistan will start expelling more than 1.3 million Afghans registered as refugees with the United Nations, in the third wave of repatriation amid global outcry to halt forceful deportation.

The third phase of repatriation targeting Afghans holding Proof of Registration (PoR) cards, a document issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), will start from September 1, several officials said on Wednesday.

Pakistan has already expelled around 1.3 million unregistered and registered Afghan refugees in two phases of forced expulsion that started from September 2023, the government told the country’s parliament in May.

The repatriations of refugees from Pakistan and neighbouring Iran have triggered a humanitarian crisis in the war-battered country now controlled by the Taliban militia, according to the UN.

The UN refugee agency and other global rights groups have urged Pakistan to rethink the repatriation plans especially for those Afghans who might be at risk from the Taliban.

“The government would go ahead with the plans to expel all Afghans,” said Awais Mujahid, an official with the Pakistani agency that deals with refugees.

Islamabad said Afghan refugees were involved in crimes and have become a burden for the country’s economy weakened by decades of armed conflicts, political uncertainty, bad governance and climate-induced disasters.

Of the 1.3 million, more than half of the Afghan refugees live in the north-western region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and a quarter in the province of Balochistan, both sharing borders with Afghanistan.

Millions of Afghans crossed into Pakistan as refugees in the past four decades, starting from the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979 and lately in 2021 when Kabul was retaken by the Taliban.

(dpa/NAN)