PESHAWAR - A group of Pakistani women married to Afghan refugees in Pakistan on Tuesday appealed to the government and federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan to facilitate their deported spouses with Pakistani nationality so that they may come back to Pakistan.
The women hailing from various localities of Peshawar, with their covered faces alongwith their children staged a protest demonstration on Sher Shah Suri road outside Peshawar Press Club. The protesting women were carrying placards inscribed with their demands and an appeal for justice with them.
“We are not willing to go to Afghanistan with our spouses because we have received threats from people living in Afghanistan. Our husbands were deported at Torkham border to their homeland Afghanistan,” said one of the women.
“We did not see and even not made a visit to Kabul or any other city of Afghanistan. So how can we live there and adjust ourselves with the people of militancy hit Afghanistan?” asked a woman having a child in her arms. “Almost 14 years have been completed of our marriage. My husband was a driver and earning livelihood for my seven kids but now he has been deported to Afghanistan wherein he is jobless and have not found a job there,” she lamented.
She claimed that her husband was born in Pakistan 40 years ago and settled here but due to current Afghan refugee crisis her husband fell victim of expulsion. “I am Pakistani by nationality and have my Computerized National Identity Card. Pakistan is our country. Why government of Pakistan does not introduces a process to give nationalities to those Afghans who were married to Pakistani women?” she suggested. “Every country in the world bestows nationality to emigrants but Pakistan does not provide this facility to our Afghan husbands,” she asked.
She said that their kids were also not ready to go to Afghanistan. Their education was also badly affected due to exile process, she added.