Islamabad, Pakistan β On a recent October evening, year-old Shakira Aslami was washing dishes in the tiny kitchen of her two-room apartment when she heard a commotion outside. As she opened the door, her son rushed in. Shakira found the bag β a blue backpack that Lima used to take to school with her back in Afghanistan β and frantically pulled out the papers, just as the men began banging on her door. She presented the passports and documents to the police officers β two of whom were in plain clothes and the other in uniform and carrying a gun.
Her neighbours β almost all of them refugees like Shakira and her family who had fled Afghanistan for Pakistan after the Taliban returned to power in August β came out of their apartments and began remonstrating with the police officers.
Shakira said the police officers eventually left, but not without being bribed. On two occasions since, other police officers have visited her home, with each set more threatening than those who came before them.
They know we all live here, they can come back anytime they want and throw us away. Although Shakira was alarmed when the police first came, she was not surprised. She had even learned from neighbours that countdown advertisements were being placed in newspapers and on television as the deadline for people to leave approached. Pakistan is home to almost 3. They fled to Pakistan in various waves in the decades since the Soviet invasion of the country in Between , and , are believed to have arrived since the Taliban returned to power in August While the majority hold some form of documentation permitting them to stay in Pakistan, government officials say more than 1.
Among them are people who were born in Pakistan and have never even been to Afghanistan. Back in Kabul, Shakira, a former history and geography teacher, worked as a medical technician in the same hospital where her husband was a logistics manager. Shakira remembers her home with pride. It had three bedrooms, two large drawing rooms β one for men and one for women β and was in an affluent neighbourhood popular with ethnic Tajiks like Shakira. Ahmad Fahim, a broad-shouldered man with a friendly disposition and an expressive face, is an ethnic Uzbek.
