This report is supported by the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives
February 28, 2024
By Laiba Hussan
PESHAWAR
Twenty one-year-old Akram Shinwari migrated from Afghanistan to Pakistan five years ago. A musician by trade, he earns his livelihood playing the rubab at weddings and other events in Peshawar.
Akram did not come to Pakistan as a refugee. He initially tried crossing the border in order to get treatment for his ailing father, but an issue with his visa and a sudden border closure prevented him from making that journey. He was able to get his parents across, while he stayed behind with his siblings.
His father, however, passed away.
“I did not get the chance to see him one final time,” he tells Voicepk. By then, the border had reopened, and Akram and his brothers and sisters gathered up everything they had to come to Pakistan. “Everytime I wake up in the morning, I wonder when I will be able to go back to my country. It has been five years since I saw Afghanistan.”
Akram once had the option of going back to his homeland, but after August 15, 2021, that option became a distant dream. A musician by trade, there is no place for people of his vocation in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where the performance arts have been strictly banned. In fact, hundreds of Afghan artists and musicians have fled to neighbouring countries following the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, with the hopes of being able to continue their craft as well as provide for their families.
However, in October 2023, Pakistan announced the immediate deportation of undocumented immigrants, a policy which came into full effect on November 1, 2023, as well as enforced a strict visa regime for all travel along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. So far over 500,000 Afghans have been deported since the inculcation of this much-decried policy, as many refugees are believed to be at risk of violence back in their country of origin.
Afghan musicians and artists are among those at risk.
“Some people’s visas have expired and the Pakistan authority is no longer reissuing them, so the security agencies are giving them trouble. Some musicians indeed have come into Pakistan illegally to save their skins, and they do not have any papers except registration [tokens] issued by the UNHCR,” explains Dr Rashid Ahmad Khan, a musicologist and founder of HunriTolna, an organization which teaches music to refugees.
Dr Khan provides that more than 700 Afghan singers and instrumentalists came to Pakistan fleeing the Taliban, and asserts that“the government of Pakistan must prioritise the concerns of this marginalised community”.
In October last year, Hunri Tolna along with 141 Afghan musicians moved the Peshawar High Court against their impending forced repatriation. The petitioners submitted that per Articles 15 and 16 of the 2003 tripartite agreement between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Pakistan and Afghanistan, voluntary repatriation is the preferred durable solution for refugees, and that the attainment of this solution requires that refugees shall return in condition of safety and dignity. Additionally, as Pakistan is signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Government of Pakistan must honor it by accommodating the civil and political rights of Afghan nationals as refugees.
While life goes on for Akram in Peshawar, he knows his heart will only find contentment in his homeland.
“I want Afghanistan to be free from the Taliban so I can live a happy life again,” he adds.