And, they are paying them to go back to a safer Afghanistan (provided to them by US blood and treasure).
So much for Muslim charity toward the stranger that we so often hear about. Pakistan blames the Afghan refugees (some have been there for decades) for crime and terror attacks, according to the LA Times.
Pakistani officials have long expressed their frustration with the lack of progress in repatriating the world’s largest refugee community — Afghans who fled the Soviet invasion and later, Taliban rule. Many refugees have lived in Pakistan for more than three decades. Their presence is resented by many Pakistanis, who see the refugees as a source of escalating crime and accuse them of involvement in terror strikes across the country.
The news this morning is that Pakistan has extended the time they have to repatriate to their homeland and is paying them (and upping the anti!) to get the heck out of Pakistan.
From the Business Recorder:
ISLAMABAD: Minister for States and Frontier and Frontier Regions Abbas Khan Afridi on Monday informed the National Assembly that currently sophisticated computerized system was in placed for the registration of Afghan refugees and period for voluntary repatriation of the refugees was extended till June 30.
Replying to a various supplementary questions during Question Hour, he said the repatriation package for the refugees was also enhanced from$ 100 to $150 per returnee in order to encourage and motivate the Afghan refugees.
Earlier, the amount was paid to them in Pakistan, now it was being paid to them in Afghanistan to discourage their re-entrance practice, he added.
The minister said that over 55,000 Afghan refugee families comprising 296,192 individuals (registered refugees) were repatriated during the last four years, bringing the total repatriation to over 3.8 million since 2002.
He said that presently around 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees were in Pakistan and the Prime Minister has recently constituted a Cabinet Committee under the Chairmanship of the SAFRON minister to deal with repatriation of the remaining refugees.
We are bringing Afghan refugees to the US (we’ve resettled over 30,000 already) and I expect that as Obama withdraws our troops you will hear the lament that we ‘broke’ Afghanistan so we have to bring their people here.
Photo from the Business Recorder, here.