ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has repatriated over 6,000 Afghan refugees from the eastern Punjab province as Islamabad intensifies its mass deportation campaign to send illegal foreigners and Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) holders back to their home countries, a senior police official said on Wednesday.
Last month, Pakistan set a deadline for approximately 800,000 Afghan nationals holding ACCs, a registration card issued by Islamabad, to leave the country by Mar. 31. Pakistani officials said earlier this week over 13,500 Afghan nationals had been repatriated since April 1.
“A total of 6,132 illegal immigrants have been deported from Lahore and across the province,” Inspector General of Punjab Police, Dr. Usman Anwar, said in a statement. “During the campaign, over 8,227 illegal immigrants have been sent to holding centers.”
He added that 2,095 illegal foreigners were currently being held at 46 holding centers set up across the province, including five in Lahore.
Highlighting that Pakistan was merely following an international deportation policy in accordance with international laws, Anwar said the data for around 89,000 illegal foreigners, including ACC holders was available.
He said the federal government and sensitive agencies were monitoring the mass deportation campaign, adding that security was on high alert throughout the province.
Anwar maintained that human rights were being upheld during the evacuation process, urging his deputies to accelerate the deportation of illegal foreigners.
According to United Nations data, Pakistan has hosted over 2.8 million Afghan nationals fleeing decades of war and instability. Of these, around 1.3 million are formally registered as refugees with Proof of Registration cards that grants them legal protection.
Pakistan decided in 2023 to deport Afghan nationals following a rise in suicide attacks, particularly in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Islamabad accused Afghan nationals of being involved in these attacks and blamed the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan for sheltering anti-Pakistan militants. Kabul denied the allegations, saying Pakistan’s security issues are its internal matter.
International rights groups accuse Pakistani police and authorities of harassing and intimidating Afghan refugees during the forced expulsion drive. However, Pakistani officials deny these allegations, saying Afghan nationals are being sent back to their homeland with dignity.

JOHANNESBURG/NAIROBI: International bonds issued by smaller, riskier, emerging economies suffered another sharp selloff on Wednesday after President Donald Trump’s eye-watering 104 percent tariffs on China took effect, re-igniting turmoil across global markets.
Pakistan’s longer-dated dollar-denominated bonds tumbled more than 6 cents to be bid below the 70-cent threshold where debt is seen as distressed, Tradeweb data showed.
Longer-dated bonds, issued by Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Egypt, were all down between 3.5-4.5 cents, although trading was thin, according to market participants.
Debt in smaller emerging markets, known as frontier markets, has suffered sharp selloffs since Trump announced a raft of sweeping tariffs last Wednesday, with many bonds in the asset class losing 10 cents or more over the past week.
The latest rout is boosting the cost of borrowing for those economies, with many of the bonds seeing their yields in the double digits, a threshold that makes it unpalatable for them to tap international capital markets.
“There are some concerns in the market that Frontiers will find it more difficult in the future to raise external funding due to the external market developments and possibly persistent loss in risk appetite,” said Gergely Urmossy, senior frontier markets strategist at Societe Generale.
This could lead to more currency weakness in those economies over the medium term and curtail the space for central banks to lower interest rates to shore up their economies, he added.
Many frontier market governments, especially African sovereigns, had only recently returned to Eurobond markets.
They had lost access for some two years when the fallout from COVID-19 and Russia’s
full-scale invasion of Ukraine sent inflation sharply higher and fueled a global interest rate-hiking cycle that priced those governments out, and helped push Ghana and Zambia into default.
Razia Khan, head of research, Africa and the Middle East at Standard Chartered, said the latest set of tariffs had fueled more concerns over global growth.
“Frontier markets, especially at the lower end of the ratings spectrum, are seen as more vulnerable when risk-off sentiment grips markets,” she said.