The Take: Forced to leave Pakistan, where can Afghan refugees go?

November 13, 2023 Current News Articles

Al Jazeera

The expulsion of undocumented Afghans in Pakistan is underscoring tensions with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

Four million Afghans seeking refuge in Pakistan have been caught up in a government crackdown on immigration. What choices are left for those being forced to leave?

In this episode:

Abid Hussain (@abidhussayn), Al Jazeera Digital correspondent

Episode credits:

This episode was produced by Amy Walters, Sonia Bhagat and our host Malika Bilal. David Enders fact-checked this episode.

Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik and Adam Abou-Gad is our engagement producer.

Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.

An Old Master’s Song for the Nation That Broke His Heart

November 10, 2023 Current News Articles

By Mujib Mashal

Reporting from Beverwijk, in the Netherlands

The New York Times

Nov. 9, 2023

For his fellow exiles, Sadiq Fitrat Nashenas, an 88-year-old star from a golden era, evokes the Afghanistan they left behind, and one that could have been.

For four nights before the concert, the old master had trouble sleeping. In his dreams, he was haunted by defeat after defeat — a failed exam, a knockout in the boxing ring. During the day, an upset stomach reduced his diet to gentle soup.

But now, Sadiq Fitrat Nashenas, 88, one of the last living stars of a golden era for Afghan music, gingerly made his way through the crowd, after nearly 20 years away from the public stage. He had the thick spectacles of a long-retired professor, the neatly trimmed mustache and elegant outfit of a gentleman of a bygone era, and the shyness of an artist still uncomfortable with adulation after a lifetime of performance.

The audience stood in applause. Mr. Nashenas gently raised his hands and blew kiss after kiss, until he was helped by the elbow onto the stage and seated behind the harmonium he would play as he sang for the next three hours.

“Life is a stage of artistry,” he intoned, opening the night with Farsi verse. His booming voice put to rest rumors that age had brought a tremble to it. “Everyone comes, recites their song, and departs. But the stage always remains.”

Mr. Nashenas’s own life and artistry speak to the Afghanistan he left behind,and one that could have been.

There is a timelessness, a sense of continuity, to his music: poems penned half a millennium ago, set to rhythmic arrangements hundreds of years old, presented to a contemporary audience in several languages of West and South Asia. The music he developed, untouched by the region’s modern political and religious fractures, blended the great Farsi poetic tradition of Iran, the folk and oral heritage of Afghanistan and the vastness of India’s classical music.

He gave his concert last month in the Netherlands, far from an Afghanistan where, since the return of Taliban rule, public music is once again banned, musical instruments are smashed by state agents and musicians are hounded.

The venue was a “party center” tucked between auto dealerships in Beverwijk, a small town just outside Amsterdam. The place had the feel of a Kabul wedding hall: bright chandeliers; waist-high plastic flowers that had to be removed from the tables so you could see Mr. Nashenas and the band. Flasks of green tea and bowls of sugarcoated almonds made their way from a tea bar in a corner.

The audience of about 300 was made up of exiles. Old exiles from the Soviet invasion of 40 years ago. Fresh exiles from the Taliban’s takeover two years ago, the violent end to a brief dance with democracy. And exiles from wars and tragedies in between. For all, Mr. Nashenas’s music sent them back, in place and time.

Mr. Nashenas himself left Afghanistan in 1991, in the final days of its Communist government. He and his family were packed into a pickup truck, navigating through insurgent checkpoints, bound for Pakistan and, eventually, London.

He would never return. His heartbreak and anger were simply too deep.

But in his grief, music remained a refuge. He recorded and performed for large audiences in the United States, Europe and Australia. Eventually, advancing age and messy diaspora politics turned him away from bigger concerts, but he kept playing for himself and a small circle of friends. He decided to perform last month mostly to see if he still had it in him.

“I was just trying to hold on to my music, because music takes me to God, to the heavens,” he said. “Life without music is a mistake.”

A Secret

He was born Mohammed Sadiq Habibi in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar in 1935 — a time, he says, when Kandahar “had one doctor and two homeopaths.” The conservative Habibi family was well known. Seven generations of its men before him had trained as Islamic scholars, known as Mawlawis.

But his father, Mawlawi Mohammed Rafiq Habibi, was a conflicted man.

Although he had studied as a religious scholar, he worked as a bank clerk and was for years the Afghan state bank’s representative in Karachi, which was then a port city in undivided India. He dressed in suits and ties and was open to debating theological questions with his son about the existence of God.

It was his mother, though, who opened new worlds for him.

Some of his earliest memories involve listening to his mother, Bibi Hazrata, and other women of the family in Arghandab, a district of pomegranates and vineyards, as they sang folk songs at weddings and family gatherings. His mother was also his early interpreter of poetic verse. She did not have formal schooling, but classical poetry in those times was a pillar of education in the mosque and at home.

“My mother had a lot of interest in poetry, and knew the meanings well,” he said.

One of the first recordings he made, years later, for Radio Afghanistan was of a Pashto folk song he had heard as a child, which his mother helped him understand. On a bus ride from Kandahar to Karachi, the conductor softly sang the song.

I am going to visit my beloved today

May God shorten these earthly ropes.

The boy tugged at his mother and asked what “earthly ropes” meant. She described God as a puppet master of sorts, sitting in the heavens.

“All these distances in the world — the threads, the ropes are in God’s hand,” she told him. “Whenever he wants to connect the lover with the beloved, brother with brother, husband with wife, he pulls the strings and the distances disappear.”

As he searched for a voice and an identity as a youth, he wrote essays and poems. “No one noticed,” he said.

Until one day when, at 15, he was singing a song as he bathed. His mother heard him and asked him to sing it again.

“She liked it, and tears started rolling down her face,” he said.

“It was at that moment that I realized: I have found my path.”

Much of his early professional musical life was a secret. He finished his university degree, found a desk job at Radio Afghanistan and used that to get behind the microphone and record songs. For four years, even as his songs became famous, no one in the family knew the voice on the radio was his.

He had taken a stage name: Nashenas, which loosely translates as “unknown,” and which he would adopt as his surname.

But one day at the bank, a clerk who had learned the true identity of the new radio star congratulated Mr. Nashenas’s father on his son’s success. His father confronted him, not happy that something so big had been kept from him for so long.

“I said, ‘You are prejudiced against music; I was afraid of that,’” Mr. Nashenas said he replied.

His father denied that, but told his son he was worried that he could face humiliation in a society where “music and dance will take another 200 years before it is seen in the fine arts.”

“He was a man of his times, and I was of mine,” Mr. Nashenas said.

Neither of his parents lived to see the peak of his fame. But Mr. Nashenas knew that his father had come around to his choice, in his own quiet and proud way.

On his deathbed, his father kept a radio next to him at low volume. He said he was listening for the news. But Mr. Nashenas’s mother later told him that his father had been keeping an ear out for his songs.

The same contradictions that marked his father’s life went even deeper in Mr. Nashenas’s own: a secular man in a profoundly religious family; a rationalist in a society trapped in tribal ways. Mr. Nashenas’s formative education took place in the Soviet Union. At heart, he became a liberal.

After earning a doctorate in literature in Moscow, he worked as a civil servant and a diplomat. When Afghanistan began to disintegrate in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he had just returned from a diplomatic posting in Moscow. Kabul, where a Soviet-backed government was in power, was encircled by the mujahedeen, the religious guerrillas supported by the Americans. The city was choked, its residents fleeing to escape the constant barrage of insurgent missiles and the long lines at bakeries running out of bread.

Mr. Nashenas and his family left everything behind, including his savings in the bank and the money from the sale of their house. Just outside the Kabul city gates, a guerrilla cornered the famous musician, who had grown out his beard and put on dirty clothes as a disguise.

“Where are you coming from?”

“Kabul.”

“What do you do there?”

“I am retired.”

“What did you do before your retirement?”

When Mr. Nashenas lost patience and asked the young man to leave him alone, the fighter lifted his gun to his chest. Finger on the trigger, the guerrilla accused him of being a “communist and an infidel.” He could easily kill him right there and no one would care, the fighter told him.

Mr. Nashenas made it out of Afghanistan, settling in London with his family of five. He would not return, even during the 20-year American presence, a time when many believed in the promise of a new beginning. It was as if he could see that what was being built would not last.

“I am aggrieved by them,” he told an interviewer earlier this year. “The country owes me my 40 years’ pension; they didn’t even give me that.”

If he went back to Kabul now, he would not recognize it — not its streets, and perhaps not its people or their ways. As he withdrew into his corner of seclusion in London, his homeland was forever changed by three decades of bloody turmoil.

But he will sing for Afghanistan as long as he has music in him.

“It’s a connection of blood,” he said.

A Full Heart

Bano Bahar, a middle-aged artist with dirty-blond hair and a big infectious laugh, took her seat at the table right at the foot of the stage. She said that while she had listened to Mr. Nashenas’s music for decades, this was the first time she was getting to see him perform live.

Ms. Bahar kept scanning the corners of the hall, asking if the old master was there yet. She was a woman on a mission: She wanted to perform a duet with Mr. Nashenas. His manager said absolutely not.

“I will do whatever it takes to make it happen,” the woman on a mission said. “I will kick and scream like a child.”

Next to her at the table was an old leftist journalist, who had also been in exile for decades. He wore a beret, a goatee and a mischievous smile. His claim to fame: Three presidents had tried to kill him, he said, and he had been poisoned six times. (Another claim to fame: He was part of a youth group that pinned a picture of a communist president to the butt of a dog and unleashed it into the city. “It took a whole military squad to chase the dog,” he laughed.)

The crowd stood as Mr. Nashenas appeared at the top of the stairs, some coming forward to kiss his hands in reverence.

He took his seat behind the harmonium that had been part of his life for 70 years. His hands trembled as he tried to arrange his handwritten notes and lyrics. He was visibly nervous — and irritated by the chaos as well-wishers and prominent exiles welcomed him in speeches.

“Music will not die in Afghanistan, poetry will not die in Afghanistan,” said Ahmad Shah Farhood, a historian. “Despite all the oppressive regimes, music will live on.”

Finally, Mr. Nashenas began the performance, accompanied by a four-man band of exiles from all over Europe. There had been no rehearsals.

At the end of the first song, Mr. Nashenas gently threw his hands up in acknowledgment of the applause.

“Don’t forget that I am 88 years old — do not expect the voice of a 25-year-old,” he joked.

Ms. Bahar was so consumed, so in awe, that she forgot about her demand for a duet. With one hand, she held her phone and broadcast the concert on Facebook. With the other, she tapped the table to the beat. In between, she wiped the tears that mixed with her mascara.

Sometimes, the old master got stuck on a verse, forgetting a line in one of his 600 songs. As he searched through his papers, his apprentice, Arash Forogh, who was playing backup harmonium, picked up the song’s thread and completed the verse. Mr. Nashenas smiled in appreciation.

On two occasions when he couldn’t remember the verse, he threw it to the audience: “Does anyone remember the last verse?”

Of course they did.

Sometimes, his hands let go of the harmonium and his fingers danced to the tabla’s beat, to the rhythm of the words he sang. An old master in a little trance. Other times, he cupped the microphone tightly in both hands — an aged rock star lost in the crescendo.

At least once, when the jitters were washed away by the audience’s love, he looked up to the sky. Later, he described it as the silent gratitude of a secular man to the powers that might be out there, “but that our mind cannot comprehend.”

Far away from the region that shaped him, far away from the homeland lost to him so long ago, in a wedding hall tucked between car dealerships, his heart was full.

To loud applause, the old master said: “I will never forget this night in my life.”

Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan. More about Mujib Mashal

Girls Reiterate Call to Reopen Schools

November 10, 2023 Current News Articles

TOLOnews

Tolo News

10 Nov 2023

They say that education is one of their fundamental rights and the Islamic Emirate should open the gates of schools to girls as soon as possible.

Coinciding with World Science Day, girls who are students above the sixth grade want to reopen schools once again.

They say that education is one of their fundamental rights and the Islamic Emirate should open the gates of schools to girls as soon as possible.

“Eight hundred days is not a small number. A day for a girl to study is like a year, but it’s been 800 days since you deprived Afghan girls of education,” said Asma, a student.

Among the girls deprived of education, Shabnam, 18, is a young girl who dreams of becoming a doctor.

“Today is the World’s Science Day, and the largest part of the Afghan society, which are women, are deprived of their most basic right. My request to the caretaker government is to open the gates of schools to all Afghan girls as soon as possible,” Shabnam, a student, told TOLOnews.

On November 10th, World Science Day for Peace and Development is celebrated every year in different countries of the world.

A number of university teachers consider Afghanistan to be one of the countries where the education process has always been accompanied by challenges.

They say that the Islamic Emirate should put opening the gates of schools and universities on their agenda.

“Keeping a large part of the society, i.e. women and girls, from education is actually avoiding a religious order on the one hand and on the other hand, depriving this large and influential section of society from the blessing of literacy, which is actually a divine order,” said Hekmatullah Mirzada, a university scholar.

Meanwhile, Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman of the Islamic Emirate, says that the caretaker government is trying to make Afghanistan progress in various sciences.

“We want Afghanistan to be equal in sciences and reach the same stages that the countries of the world have reached, we are trying to progress in various sciences,” Zabihullah Mujahid said.

Earlier, Roza Otunbayeva, the head of UNAMA, at the Women in Islam conference in Jeddah, criticized what she called the violation of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.

Raisi at ECO Calls for Economic Support for Afghanistan, Inclusive Govt

November 10, 2023 Current News Articles

Fatima Adib

Tolo News

10 Nov 2023

Iran, Tajikistan Continue to Call for Inclusive Govt in Afghanistan

November 9, 2023 Current News Articles

Fatema Adeeb

Tolo News

9 Nov 2023

Speaking at the conference, Raisi accused America of destruction, murder, slaughter and backwardness in Afghanistan.

Iran and Tajikistan once again called for the formation of an inclusive government in Afghanistan.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said that the two nations seek the establishment of an inclusive government in Afghanistan that includes all ethnic groups and religions, during a joint news conference with President Imam Ali Rahman of Tajikistan.

Speaking at the conference, Raisi accused America of destruction, murder, slaughter and backwardness in Afghanistan.

“We believe that a government should be established in Afghanistan that represents all ethnicities, religions and the people of Afghanistan and can take lasting steps towards the progress of this country,” Raisi said.

“During the negotiations, we discussed the international and regional issues, especially the situation in Afghanistan, the Palestinian issue, and the problems of other regions of the world,” Imam Ali Rahman said.

However, Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman of the Islamic Emirate, said that their government is inclusive and asked countries not to interfere in the internal affairs of Afghanistan.

“Afghanistan’s internal issues should be left to the Afghans, and other countries should not interfere in its type of system, because Afghanistan has been the source of external interventions for the past 40 years, which have had no results,” Mujahid added.

According to some political analysts, the Islamic Emirate should take practical steps for the sake of the country’s progress in forming an inclusive government.

“Afghans also want a government that they see themselves involved in, a government that does not belong to only one class, and the world has also told the Islamic Emirate. It is good for the Emirate to establish an inclusive government as soon as possible,” Wahid Faqiri, a political analyst, told TOLOnews.

Earlier, the acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said that the international community has not yet provided a clear definition of the establishment of an inclusive government in Afghanistan.

Over 50,000 Refugees Returned Through Spin Boldak in 9 Days

November 9, 2023 Current News Articles

By TOLOnews

TV Network

9 Nov 2023

A number of refugees deported from Pakistan complain about the inappropriate treatment of the Pakistani military.

A number of refugees deported from Pakistan complain about the inappropriate treatment of the Pakistani military.

They say that now that they have returned to the country, there is a need for the caretaker government to address their challenges.

After the beginning of the process of forced deportation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan in the last nine days, more than 50 thousand immigrants have entered the country through Spin Boldak Kandahar.

Local officials of Kandahar pledged that they will continue their efforts to deal with the challenges of the deported refugees.

“6,000 families numbering 50,000 people have returned to the country since the beginning of November and this process is continuing,” said Ali Mohammad Haqmal, Information officer of Spin Boldak, Kandahar.

“Our mujahidin protect the security of people who come here all night. If they have any illness or problem, we will treat them,” said Hekmatullah Faizani, the security officer of the refugees camp in Spin Boldak.

A number of refugees who have been deported from Pakistan, complained of inappropriate treatment by the Pakistani military. According to these refugees, the Pakistani military has also confiscated their property.

“In Pakistan the refugees have big problems, the men were separated from their women and they knew nothing of every injustice they have done to them,” said Mohammad Barat, a deported refugee.

“We want them to give us land and give us some shelter,” said Abdul Bari, a deported refugee.

With the beginning of the process of deporting Afghan refugees from Pakistan, some merchants in Kandahar have also started the process of helping the refugees in this province.

Based on the information of the local officials of Kandahar, a number of refugee families who do not have shelter will be provided accommodation in temporary camps and some are moving to their provinces.

Voices Raised to End Restrictions on Women, Girls in Afghanistan

November 9, 2023 Current News Articles

Fatema Adeeb

Tolo News

9 Nov 2023

However, the Islamic Emirate’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, rejected the violation of women’s rights in the country.

The head of UNAMA, Roza Otunbayeva, once again criticized what she called the violation of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.

Speaking at the international conference “Women in Islam,” which was held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, by the OIC, Otunbayeva said restrictions on women and girls have been denied access to high schools and higher education.

“Women and girls, these restrictions have denied them access to high schools, higher education, and just about every sphere of social economic cultural, and political life. Regrettably, these limitations have become integral parts of the governing system presented by the Taliban…,” she added.

“As those doors of opportunity closed to the Afghan women, I think it is absolutely correct for Muslim countries to ask of the Afghan government as to who has given them the right to close the door of opportunity exclusively for women,” said the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs for the Cabinet of Pakistan, Hina Rabbani Khar.

“The time has come … this suspension has to stop. We the people of Afghanistan, women of Afghanistan, and you, the most important organization for the Muslim world, let’s repeat this message — and find a solution for women of Afghanistan,” said the head of the Afghan Women’s Association Fatana Gilani.

However, the Islamic Emirate’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, rejected the violation of women’s rights in the country and said that the issue of education in the country can be solved but it takes time to solve it.

“First, this is that the rights of the sisters will be addressed. Secondly, regarding the education of sisters, a part of their education has been suspended, which has not been denied, but the search is ongoing to find a suitable solution,” Mujahid noted.

This comes as more than eight hundred days have passed since schools above the sixth grade were closed for girls, an issue that has always had internal and external reactions, but the Islamic Emirate has yet to speak about the reopening of schools for girls.

Half of Afghan Population Below Poverty Line: World Bank Economist

November 9, 2023 Current News Articles

TOLOnews

TV Network

9 Nov 2023

Some economists added that half of Afghanistan’s population currently lives below the poverty line.

Several World Bank top economists voiced worries during a discussion at the US Institute of Peace over the deterioration of Afghanistan’s dire economic conditions.

“We see that in terms of monetary poverty, we still have half of the population that in 2023 is consuming below the poverty line,” said Silvia Redaelli, Senior Economist, the World Bank.

Naheed Sarabi, Director and Cofounder, Institute for Development and Economic Affairs, said at the discussion that the economic situation of women is getting worse.

“Feminization of poverty is a fact in Afghanistan, and it is getting worse and worse. It is not the restrictive policies of the Taliban that affect poverty and women’s activities, but there have been reports that in villages and rural areas people actually self-police because of fear, because of the environment that has been created,” Sarabi noted.

Meanwhile, some economists attribute the increase in economic challenges in the country to the imposition of restrictions by the international community, saying that to solve this problem, the Islamic Emirate should increase economic interactions with the countries of the region.

“One of the main reasons of the current situation of the country is because of the sanctions imposed by the went on the country,” Abdul Naseer Reshtia, an economist told TOLOnews.

The Ministry of Economy said that by launching large economic projects in the country, they are trying to provide job opportunities for the citizens.

“In order to overcome the economic challenges, the Islamic Emirate is working on development projects, strengthening of private sector and infrastructure, and the launching of large economic projects that provide employment,” said Abdul Latif Nazari, Deputy of the Ministry of Economy.

Previously, various UN agencies expressed their concerns about the economic crisis in Afghanistan, saying that nearly 30 million people in Afghanistan need humanitarian aid.

Pakistan PM says expulsion of Afghans a response to Taliban non-cooperation

November 9, 2023 Current News Articles

Reuters

November 8, 2023

ISLAMABAD, Nov 8 (Reuters) – Pakistan said on Wednesday that its move to expel hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans was a response to the unwillingness of the Taliban-led administration to act against militants using Afghanistan to carry out attacks in Pakistan.

Last month, Pakistan set a Nov. 1 start date for the expulsion of all undocumented immigrants, including hundreds of thousands of Afghans. It cited security reasons, brushing off calls to reconsider from the United Nations, rights groups and Western embassies.

“After non-cooperation by the Afghan interim government, Pakistan has decided to take matters into its own hands – and Pakistan’s recent actions are neither unexpected or surprising,” caretaker Prime Minister Anwar ul Haq Kakar told journalists.

Tens of thousands of Afghans, many of whom have lived in Pakistan for decades, have had to leave the country, and authorities are rounding up many more in raids across the country.

Kakar said 15 suicide bombings in recent months had been carried out by Afghans, and dozens of Afghans had been killed in clashes with Pakistani security forces. He said Pakistan had continuously conveyed concerns about militant safe havens in Afghanistan but, despite repeated assurances, the Taliban-led administration had not taken action.

Instead, evidence suggested militants had been facilitated in Afghanistan, said Kakarm in an unusually strongly-worded statement against the Taliban, who for years were considered to be close allies of Pakistan.

A spokesman for the Taliban administration, Zabihullah Mujahid, in a statement denied the accusations.

Kakar said Islamabad had hoped the Taliban’s ascent to power in 2021, which followed the withdrawal of U.S.-led foreign forces from the country, would bring peace and cooperation.

But since then, he said, there had been a 60% rise in militant attacks in Pakistan and a 500% rise in suicide bombings in which more than 2,200 Pakistanis had been killed.

Mujahid said that the increasing militant attacks in Pakistan after the Taliban’s coming to power did not mean the Islamist movement was behind the insecurity.

There has been a resurgence of attacks by Islamist militants in Pakistan since talks between Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Pakistani state broke down in 2022.

TTP, an umbrella organisation of Islamist groups, pledges allegiance to, and gets its name from, the Afghan Taliban but is not directly a part of the entity that rules Afghanistan.

Kakar said that Pakistan had communicated to the Taliban administration that it had to “choose between Pakistan and the TTP”.

Reporting by Gibran Peshimam; Editing by Alex Richardson

Keeping lights off: Undocumented Afghans go underground in Pakistan

November 9, 2023 Current News Articles

By Ariba Shahid and Mohammad Yunus Yawar

Reuters

November 9, 2023

KARACHI, Pakistan, Nov 9 (Reuters) – After living in Pakistan for years, thousands of Afghans have gone into hiding to escape a government order to expel undocumented foreigners because they fear persecution under a Taliban administration in their homeland, rights activists say.

“The gate is locked from the outside… we are locked inside, we can’t come out, we can’t turn on our lights, we can’t even talk loudly,” said a 23-year-old Afghan woman, speaking online from a shelter where she said dozens of others had holed up until earlier this week before moving on to a new hideout.

Local supporters put a lock on the gate so neighbours believe the house is unoccupied, said other inmates.

The woman, who is from the Afghan capital Kabul, said she fears prosecution if she returns to Afghanistan because she converted from Islam to Christianity in 2019 and renunciation of the Islamic faith is a serious offence under the strict Islamic law practised by the Taliban.

She is one of thousands believed by rights activists to be in hiding in Pakistan to avoid deportation under a government push for undocumented migrants to leave the country. That includes over one million Afghans, many of whom the Pakistan government says have been involved in militant attacks and crime.

Authorities began rounding up operations across the country after a deadline for voluntary exits expired on Nov. 1.

Sijal Shafiq, 30, a Karachi-based human rights activist who helped vulnerable Afghans find shelter before Pakistan’s new expulsion policy, is one of several petitioners asking the Supreme Court to halt the deportation programme.

“I know several women, girls, who say they would rather die than return under the Taliban,” Shafiq says, adding that they all had professional dreams and ambitions which would be impossible to realise in Afghanistan, where women are forbidden from most jobs and can travel only with a male escort.

There was no immediate comment from a spokesman of the Taliban-run administration on whether those returning would be screened or prosecuted under their laws. Pakistan’s foreign and interior ministries also did not respond to requests for comment about exempting at-risk individuals from deportation.

The Pakistani government has so far brushed off calls from the United Nations, rights groups and Western embassies to reconsider its expulsion plan or to identify and protect Afghans who face the risk of persecution at home.

Western embassies, including the United States, have also provided Pakistani authorities lists of Afghans being processed for possible migration abroad, and asked that they be exempt from expulsion, but the numbers are small compared to the people at risk.

Reuters spoke to a dozen undocumented migrants trying to stay under the radar of the nationwide sweep. Because of their situation, they declined to be identified or asked that their full names not be used.

They included a 35-year-old father, also a Christian convert, who fled to Pakistan with his nine-year-old daughter.

Another young girl in the shelter said she fears for her life because she belongs to the ethnic Hazara minority, which has for years faced persecution from hardline Sunni extremists in Afghanistan.

“This is worse than prison,” said a 22-year-old Afghan man who said he ensured the lights remained off at night.

Some locals who are helping the Afghans arrange for food and water to be secretly smuggled into the shelter under the cover of night.

Afghan singer Wafa, 28, fears her days of refuge in Pakistan, where she moved shortly after the Taliban takeover over two years ago, are coming to an end because her visa has expired.

Speaking from a relative’s home in Islamabad, she said she hoped that she could either get asylum in France or Canada, or make Pakistan her home, as her profession of singing Pashto songs, which she started 11 years ago, is no longer acceptable in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have banned public music performances.

But she is yet to hear back, and applying for a visa extension remains unaffordable for her family. In the meantime, she does not leave the house to avoid widespread snap checks by Pakistani police.

“I am a singer… I know what will happen to me when I’m back,” Wafa said.

Saleh Zada, a 32-year-old singer in Karachi, said he moved from Afghanistan a year ago.

“I was singing in my village for friends and relatives, we had lots of parties, singing parties,” Saleh Zada said, speaking at a crowded low-income neighbourhood apartment belonging to his relatives. He showed Reuters video clips of him playing the harmonium and rubab, a string instrument, some of which were on social media.

“My family advised me to leave Afghanistan, I feared the Taliban,” he says, adding that the fear of being picked up by Pakistani police, because he does not have a valid visa, has kept him indoors for days.

“Life is difficult here (in Pakistan), but I have to save my life.”

Writing by Gibran Peshimam; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan

A Secret

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