Afghans pushed out: Pakistan’s farms, mines in trouble

By Jamila Achakzai

WASHINGTON: The abrupt departure of thousands of undocumented Afghans has left Bibi Jawzara, an elderly Pakistani woman, “really worried.” For decades, she has relied on Afghan migrants to tend her farm in the southwestern province of Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan. But with Pakistani officials launching an effort to expel some 1.7 million undocumented Afghans last month, the septuagenarian has been struggling to find skilled workers to prune and fertilize apple trees and grapevines on her land.

“The crucial fertilizer time is upon me but I don’t have enough workers for this job,” she told DW. “As my sons and grandsons live in cities for business and education, Afghan refugees cared for our orchards for years. But now as they suddenly left for home to avoid deportation, we find ourselves in a real predicament.”

Jawzara used to employ members of five Afghan Pashtun families, who fled their country after the Soviet invasion in 1979. Refugee women used to do chores in her house and men worked in fields, with the Pakistani woman and two of her sons supervising and helping them.

Even with new generations in the small community born and raised in Pakistan, they tended to live on Jawzara’s farmland and be dependent on the their employer for food, health care, and other needs. But the recent anti-immigrant clampdown has changed everything.

Most undocumented Afghans in Pakistan were living in Balochistan and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces — both bordering Afghanistan — and never felt residency documents were necessary, with their lives limited to their areas.

Earlier this year, the Pakistani government declared the presence of undocumented migrants to be both a security and economic challenge. Hundreds of thousands have already been expelled or left on their own.

And, despite Pakistani officials pledging that 2.3 million legal Afghan migrants were free to remain as long as their papers are valid, more than a few documented migrants also returned to their home country. They feared that Pakistan would soon try to deport them as well, and warned that the authorities look determined to send all Afghans — whether documented or undocumented — home.

Afghan labourers have a reputation for being cheap, skilled, and hard-working. They are also in a vulnerable position due to their living on foreign soil. The mass exodus has now sparked labor shortages in sectors like agriculture and mining in Pakistan’s border areas.

“Orders for [undocumented] migrants to leave caught our Afghan workers, as well as us, off guard. Neither were they mentally prepared to go away on short notice, nor did we have any idea of what to do without them,” said Jahangir Shah, who owns a coal mine in Balochistan’s Duki district.

Afghans make up 60% of Shah’s employees. The repatriation effort, according to the mine owner, forced him to briefly suspend mining operations. Even after the work was resumed with extended shifts, production was very slow due to labor shortages. Shah fears production targets will not be met.

“Our bids to return to normal face challenges, especially the unavailability of skilled workers,” he told DW, adding that workers from other areas are “not coming in despite offers of better payment.”