Pakistan Refuses to Host Additional Afghan Refugees
Voice of America
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan’s government said it has reached its limit and cannot accept more Afghan refugees as the threat of violence looms in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials are demanding that the world make arrangements for the refugees inside Afghanistan, amid fears that millions of Afghans may be forced to flee into neighboring countries if fighting between Taliban and Afghan government forces intensified or deteriorated into a civil war. “As a matter of fact, we are not in position to accept any more refugees,” Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf told VOA in a one-on-one interview. Almost 3 million Afghan refugees, half of them unregistered, have been living in Pakistan since the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s and subsequent waves of violence and later a civil war, according to the U.N.FILE - Danny Fenster, center, hugs his mother Rose Fenster as former U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson, right, looks on at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, Nov. 16, 2021. Journalist Fenster was held in a Myanmar prison. Harrison Li holds a photo of his father, Kai Li, on Jan. 23, 2024, in Palo Alto, Calif. Li's father, Kai, remains detained in China on espionage charges his family says are bogus and FILE - A Hamas cameraman stands behind Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, released after more than five years in captivity, on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on Oct. 18, 2011. FILE - Families and friends of current and former hostages and detainees gather outside of the White House in Washington, May 3, 2023, to ask the Biden administration for more help. FILE - Joey and Paula Reed pose for a photo with a portrait of their son Marine veteran and Russian prisoner Trevor Reed at their home in Fort Worth, Texas, Feb. 15, 2022. FILE - In this March 16, 2016, file photo, American student Otto Warmbier, center, is escorted at the Supreme Court in Pyongyang, North Korea.
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