Talk:Afghans in Pakistan/Archive 1

Plans for Future Edits
After viewing this wikipage, a few things jumped out to me that I hope to revise. I plan on editing the introduction to the section entitled 'History and Migration,' as there are a few pieces of information that are not currently present, which could potentially be of great contribution. Though the current section of the article I plan on revising includes many important pieces of information and, overall, does an excellent job introducing the reason for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, I hope to expand on a few concepts, and create a more in-depth immersion of the Afghan refugee crisis. By including more in-depth information regarding the relationship between Afghan refugees and Pakistan citizens, I hope to better portray the history of this tumultuous relationship. My revisions touch primarily on important issues that I feel summate the relationship between Afghan refugees, and their Pakistani hosts. For instance, by including the injustices in which Afghan refugees were treated with in Pakistani society, as well as the vast political and social protests that arose throughout the 1980's as a direct result of these inequalities. Furthermore, when introducing the impact of 9/11 on Afghan refugees throughout Pakistan, I felt as though the article primarily focused on the presence of Al-Qaeda. Though this is of incredible importance, and should indeed be included, I do feel as though information could be provided on how this global event affected Afghan refugees as a whole, as they were subsequently generalized by Pakistans government, and blamed for growing 'security concerns' throughout the nation. As a result, many were repatriated, uprooted from their lives, and deported back to Afghanistan--despite most having called Pakistan home for decades. Much of this information I will be providing has been meticulously researched, and collected from sources, including an article entitled "“The Transformation of the Afghan Refugee: 1979–2009", written by Maliha Safri, and published by the Middle Eastern Journal. In total, I expect my revision to be around 300-400 words. If anyone has any thoughts or concerns, I would love to hear your opinion--whether they be criticisms or contributions--and use them to improve upon my intended edits. Jemach98 (talk) 01:40, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Afghan Migrants plus Afghan Refugees
The wording in this article needs to reflect the fact that many Afghans had migrated to Pakistan prior to the Soviet invasion of 1979 and subsequent civil wars for issues of commerce, trade and business. Afghan tribes had set up various colonies in the late 19th Century in the major commercial capital of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Multan and Lahore. Some of these Afghan colonies were set up as recently as the 1950's and 1960's. Keeping this in mind, not all the Afghans in Pakistan came as refugees and this article needs to reflect that. Furthermore, if we want to get even more specific, the first nominal state of Afghanistan as established by Ahmed Shah Durrani, and Afghan chieftain born in the city of Multan consisted of the core geographic territory of all of Pakistan and Afghanistan. All of Pakistan was essentially Afghanistan with the Sind and Panjab Provinces being major reservoirs for Afghan seeking greener pastures. The exact number of Afghans (direct Afghans from areas within Afghanistan - dont want to turn this into a All Pashtun are Afghan topic, as many Pashtuns originate and are indigenous to regions within Pakistan as well) we should try to get this article to be broadened to include the trading and commerce communities who migrated to Pakistan as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.32.116.115 (talk) 06:48, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Latest edits
I helped cleanup and fixed the article so that everything is explained as what the sources say. User:Saki, a Punjabi Pakistani is blindly reverting my edits. For example, I correct spelling North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) but he changed "North-West" back to the wrong spelling one word "Northwest". Although this is minor, it still shows that he has no respect for other editors.

He also keeps re-adding Tajik language which I explained in the edit-summary that this is not a language spoken by Afghans. That's like someone saying that Pakistanis speak Hindi language.

The source does not say that all those areas of Peshwar are composed entirely of Afghans refugees as the article falsely claim. The source only states that thousands of Afghan immigrants or refugees are found living in those areas.

I added official government sources to help explain how many Afghan refugees live in Karachi and we need similar kind of reliable sources for other claims. I hate immisinformation so I decided to make the article more truthful. I work at the UNHCR office in Islamabad and I deal with Afghan issues.--119.73.6.164 (talk) 08:57, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Pakistani Pashtuns are Afghans in Pakistan
Afghan meant Pashtun, and before the creation of Pakistan, the British Raj recognized approximately 20 million Pashtuns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as Afghans. The Red Shirts organization were initially opposed to the British for lacking them education (Pashtuns most uneducated people), then pleaded to be with Afghanistan once Ali Jinnah started his thing. Heck, if not every Afghanistani leader wanted to rob Pakistan at it's advantage, it's rather best to lay Pakhtunkhwa with Pakistan to stop ethnocentricism.

We really don't want any more anti-Sikh sentiments either, as it's pretty much their takeover of Peshewar leaving Afghanistan's land in Pakistan's hands. Even Pakistani Pashtuns are proudly Pakistani and it's nothing but a hullaballo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Themastertree (talk • contribs) 06:49, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

LoL, yes, i live in Karachi and 99% of the Afghans moved into the Pashtun neighbourhoods. Abdul Ghaffar Khan burried himself in Jalalabad, Afghanistan (Jalalabad is a predominantly ethnic Pashtun city and appear to be the most advanced Pashtuns) because he thinks he's afghan just because he's pashtun didn't want to be a Paki :P--108.173.174.134 (talk) 00:01, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Total numbers as of 2011
According to the latest UNHCR official website, the Government of Pakistan,  and all the world news reports, there are a total of 1.7 million Afghans in Pakistan. ,, , , However, despite all of this, user:Mar4d all of a sudden decided to change the 1.7 million and is claiming that there are "3 million" Afghans still living in Pakistan, and he's using this rare May 2009 news article written by a Pakistani editor (Anwer Hussain Sumra). I don't think this news article is reliable in this case because UNHCR and Pakistani government do not agree with it. Mar4d is claiming that about 1.3 million Afghans some how found a way to make forged computerized Pakistani ID cards so they can avoid getting the real official government made IDs when they were given the chance to do so. This makes no sense, why would people do that? Afghan refugees are very poor, they cannot afford to pay for such things, plus even Pakistani citizens have a very difficult time to obtain their passport even when they present all necessary documents. Btw, a person who does this crime can very easily be caught because when their fake ID card is run by the police in police computers no info will show up and a crime like this carries 5 years prison sentence in Pakistan.--NorthernPashtun (talk) 12:40, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Details
Mar4d cited this news article written by Anwer Hussain Sumra, and it states:"...During the Russian invasion in 1979, some 3.5 million Afghans hailing from Baghlan, Qandoos, Kabul, Jalalabad, Nangarhar, Paktia, Paktika, Balakh and Logar migrated to Pakistan. Most refugees settled in the NWFP (1,878,170) followed by Balochistan (769,268), Punjab (207,768), Sindh (135,724), Islamabad (45,269) and then (13,079) in Azad Kashmir."

That is what 100s of other sources explain, and according to this UNHCR report:"...More than 3.5 million Afghans have returned home from Pakistan with UNHCR's help since 2002 while more than a million others have returned by their own means. The voluntary repatriation operation resumed this week after the winter recess, from UNHCR centres in the North West Frontier Province city of Peshawar and in Quetta in the southern province of Balochistan. UNHCR remains committed to continuing its work with the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan to find lasting solutions for Afghan refugees."

After understanding this, that over 4.5 million Afghans went back to Afghanistan between 2002 and 2009, why is the article stating that 3 million Afghans still live in Pakistan? Did millions of Pakistanis go to Afghanistan in the mame of Afghans? Mard4 is creating confusion, he's putting old numbers in the article instead of the current ones.--NorthernPashtun (talk) 13:28, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Distorting and falsifying
I'm going to make my changes step by step by correcting the following information:
 * Under "Terrorism" Mar4d added "In the 2011 Dera Ghazi Khan bombings there were also several Afghan militants involved" but the attached source does not mention the nationality of the suicide bombers. The news report states:"The card identifies the bomber as Abdullah, son of Noorullah, resident of Mirali in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa."

"Resident of Mirali in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa" usually means he is local Pakistani. It also mentions that "police officer Shah claimed that they have arrested a third suspected suicide bomber, identified as Fida Hussain, a 15- to 16-year-old Afghan refugee from the tribal belt." However, all of this doesn't prove or tell us that all of the bombers were Afghans, to say they were is speculation and POV. So therefore, I'm going to change the info to reflect on what the news report actually says.--NorthernPashtun (talk) 19:37, 15 November 2011 (UTC) However, the source used as a reference for this actually states:"In particular, heroin and opium from Afghanistan via Peshawar, Pakistan, have been a major regional problem. Drug smuggling operations are the primary source of funding for some Pakistani and Central Asian Islamic militant groups. In this context, Zhou Shengtao, deputy secretary of the Xinjiang Chinese Communist Party Committee, has alleged that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement has derived immense profits from drug trafficking. Some Pakistani business people in Xinjiang complain bitterly about Afghans giving Pakistanis “a bad name” by faking Pakistani documents and smuggling drugs into China. These Afghans are accused of carrying drugs sewn into their clothes across the border. Although some have succeeded in bribing officials and securing their cooperation, others were caught and hanged. Dealing with this drug trade was central to transborder security discussions throughout the 1990s, and China did not hesitate to take unilateral steps to address the problem. On June 4, 1996, the Urdu language daily Nawai Waqt quoted a Chinese diplomat as saying, “Dozens of [Pakistani] people, allegedly involved in smuggling of drugs, were arrested by Chinese guards and one has been sentenced to death. Several Pakistani drug smugglers are still languishing in Chinese jails.”"
 * Under "Smuggling", in the second paragraph, Mar4d wrote:"Afghan drug smugglers have become a problem for Pakistan into other countries too. For example, much of the drug smuggling problems occurring in China's western province of Xinjiang occur from the border with Pakistan. Pakistani traders based in Xinjiang attribute the problem to Afghan smugglers carrying false Pakistani documents as being active in the trade and responsible for giving Pakistanis a "bad name".[32] Afghan smugglers have been accused of attempting to carry drugs sewn into their clothes across the border. While some are able to succeed in bribing and negotiating with officials, others have been arrested and hanged"

This is talking about Pakistani drug smugglers that Chinese officials were complaining about in the 1990s and the Pakistanis businessmen were telling the Chinese government officials something like this.... [it's not us, we are good guys but it's the Afghans who are doing this, they make fake Pakistani documents and give us a bad name].... We cannot follow these Pakistani accusations because their claims cannot be verified, plus they are businessmen and not government officials. May I also remind you that since 2001 to May 2011, Pakistanis were telling the world at large that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan but in the end it turned out that OBL was hiding 20 minutes away from the Presidential Palace in Islamabad, Pakistan. You can see that in the end it clearly states that Pakistanis were smuggling the drugs into China since they have a sharing border, but of course the Pakistanis don't want to accept this so they "accuse" Afghans. This is why I kept removing it but Mar4d insists on keeping it so now I took the time to explain why shit like this should not be added to this article because this is about Afghans in Pakistan, not about Afghans in China. This info is considered irrelevant and it contradicts Mar4d's POV. On the other hand, I'm not trying to defend Afghans. I believe that there are some Afghans who smuggle their drugs from Afghanistan into other countries through Pakistan but what does Afghans living in Pakistan have to do with that? Mard4 is stretching his POV too far with all of this.--NorthernPashtun (talk) 20:30, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm removing the sub-section "Registration and fake ID cards" because that is more related to human smuggling and should be added to the "smuggling". Also the claims by the Interior Ministry about Afghan refugees having fake ID cards is being rejected by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), and according to NADRA, non-Pakistanis obtaining Pakistan's national ID cards is almost impossible. This news report is talking about recent debates over giving the remaining Afghans in the country Pakistani National ID cards. In other words, they become Pakistanis and several anti-Afghan politicians raised objections to the idea.


 * And the last one, what the hell is this suppose to explain? "According to one particular report, asylum seekers from Afghanistan seeking to move abroad can pay up to $10,000 to smugglers to obtain and use false Pakistani passports. The fake passports get stamped by a corrupt official and then the asylum seekers are allowed to board the ship." That doesn't mention of Afghans using fake Pakistani passports. The news report talks about Pakistani human smugglers based in Karachi are charging $10,000 per person to smuggle them to Malaysia. Mar4d assumes that the Afghans cannot travel to other countries with their Afghan passport and that they must make Pakistani passports in order to reach Malaysia. First, it's nearly impossible for Afghans to make Pakistani passports because it is a very long procedure that requires offcial Pakistani birth certificate along with Pakistani National ID card and must pass biometric test. How can Afghans make these documents? Even if an Afghan refugee was born inside Pakistan, their birth cerficates clearly mention that they along with their both parents are "Afghan nationals". And even if some how some made these, it will do them no good in other countries because Pakistanis do not qualify for asylum as easy as Afghans do with Afghan passport. This Mar4d has absolutely no idea what he's doing here, he just finds news report on google and adds it next to nonsense that he writes in Wikipedia articles. As for me, I'm an investigative editor. I try to be as accurate as possible with my editing. I'm removing this nonsense now.--NorthernPashtun (talk) 21:43, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

As of December 2016, there are only 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: More than 200,000 Afghan refugees have been repatriated from Pakistan this year, the UN High Commissioner said on Tuesday. Nearly half of those Afghan men, women and children left in the month of September alone, the highest number since the US toppled the Taliban in 2002. ...

But UNHCR said the figure, based on its own data, was already out of date and should be revised to 1.4 million after the movement since July. 

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