TORKHAM, Afghanistan — First, the Afghan families’ homes were raided by Pakistani policemen wielding sticks. Then the men were hauled off to jail, released only after relatives paid bribes.
When they had nothing left to pay, they said, they were told to leave Pakistan forever and return to Afghanistan — officially their native country, but a land foreign to many Afghan refugees after generations of flight across the border.
Such experiences have become increasingly common for Afghans living in Pakistan after the terrorist attack on a school in Peshawar in December. Though the attack was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan refugees say it fueled a new wave of resentment against them. Since then, almost a thousand Afghans a day have been streaming through the border crossing at Torkham, many saying they were forced out, others worried enough to pick up and leave.
It is not clear if the pressure on Afghans to leave Pakistan is the result of a widespread policy, or if local officials are taking advantage of the situation to expel unwanted refugees, as many Afghans suspect. But the numbers have clearly been growing. Afghan officials who screen traffic at Torkham report that more than 33,000 undocumented Afghans returned from Pakistan in the first six weeks of 2015 — more than for all of 2014.
Clinging to the backs of trucks, some of the Afghans tried to put on brave faces.
“It’s an honor to come back to my country,” said Wazir Khan, 32, as he and his family lingered in a long line of colorful cargo vehicles awaiting inspection before entering Afghanistan.
Mr. Khan was born in Pakistan, and the only lifeline he had to his Afghan homeland was scrawled in blue ink on his left palm: the phone number of an in-law he was supposed to call once he crossed the border. Still, he insisted, “It’s a joyful moment.”
The United Nations says that there are nearly 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and there are many more hundreds of thousands of unregistered Afghans living in the country. The Pakistani authorities have long said that they would like the Afghans to return home, concerned that their presence on Pakistani soil undermines security.
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Though many returning Afghans have relatives who will take them in, others have nowhere to go. In Jalalabad, the closest big city on the Afghan side of Torkham, 15 families pitched tents along a canal two weeks ago, lacking any other recourse. Their children pulled turnips from a nearby field, their most reliable source of food.
They all come from the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir, where Afghans settled more than 35 years ago, fleeing the Soviet invasion.
In their pockets, the men carry handwritten notes, bearing a government stamp, which they received in a police station after they had been arrested. Each one states that the person has entered into an “agreement” to leave. Some of the slips of paper direct the bearer to head “toward Afghanistan.”
A few miles from the border, at a way station maintained by the International Organization of Migration, an intergovernmental group, an 8-year-old boy named Qutuz asked where his family was headed.
“We are going to the homeland we are from,” his mother, Pari Gul, explained. But in an interview, she said, “It feels like we are exiled from our house and we have nothing.”
She worried most about how her six children would fare. “We have never spoken a word about this country to our children,” she said. “They have no idea what this country is; it is like they are blindfolded.”
Khalid Alokozay contributed reporting from Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
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