After a lifetime in Pakistan, Afghans are told to leave

1.5 million refugees given 6 months

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Saeed Hamid’s restaurant is covered with touristic murals from Afghanistan — blue-tiled shrines and aqua lakes, ancient Buddhas carved into cliffs, and an enormous scene of horses and riders scrimmaging on a muddy field, trying to capture the carcass of a goat.

Mr. Hamid’s nostalgia stops right there. His parents fled their conflicted homeland before he was born, and he grew up in Pakistan’s capital. He learned English, married and raised his own children here, and built a flourishing bakery and kebab house that employs 20 people and is packed every evening.

So it is easy to understand his anxiety about the future. In the past year, more than 250,000 undocumented Afghan refugees have returned to their impoverished, insurgentplagued country under pressure from Pakistani authorities. Now, the population of 1.5 million long-settled, registered refugees has been given six months to leave as well.

“No one has bothered us yet, but everyone is worried,” Mr. Hamid said on a recent afternoon, as the smell of newly baked bread filled his eatery. “We are happy and busy here. If we had to go back, there would be nothing to do and no one to welcome us, only the Taliban and [the Islamic State group],” he said.

For decades, neighboring Pakistan has provided a safety valve for Afghans who fled successive periods of conflict and repression, hosting up to 5 million at a time. The reception has not always been enthusiastic, but it has been heavily subsidized by the United Nations, and most refugees have easily blended into the large population of ethnic Pashtuns that historically straddled the border.

They have also been a headache for security agencies, who often complained that some refugee camps and communities harbored thieves, drugs and armed militants, and that it was impossible to police a population that flowed loosely across the border and whose members often held no official IDs.

The refugee population has also become hostage to tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with both countries accusing each other of harboring militants in the porous border regions. In late 2014, when terrorists invaded a Pakistani military school, killing 141 students and teachers and enraging public opinion, authorities vowed to start sending the refugees back.

The push took many forms, from police harassment to a government publicity campaign, endorsed by officials in Kabul, that urged Afghans to return with the slogan, “My home is my flower.” After refugee leaders protested, departure deadlines were postponed several times, but the trickle of returnees swelled to tens of thousands early this year, especially after the U.N. added an extra cash bonus for each family once they resettled in Afghanistan.

The surge intensified in June, when Pakistan erected a large gate at Torkham, the major border crossing near Peshawar, and announced that no Afghans could reenter without a passport and visa. That was tantamount to social death for refugees used to visiting relatives back home and then returning to the safety and prosperity of Pakistan.