The Chargé d’Affaires of the US Mission to Afghanistan Karen Decker visited Pakistan, Afghanistan’s eastern and southern neighbor, to discuss the situation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
The US official for Afghanistan, who remotely works from Doha, the capital of Qatar, visited Pakistan as part of her “listening tour”, according to a thread of tweets she posted on her Twitter handle on Tuesday, November 8.
A series of tweets suggests that the US official will learn about the plight of Afghan refugees in Pakistan as well as the organizations and individuals working to support Afghans and Afghanistan in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
According to the tweet, the US official is visiting Pakistan after 30 “long” years, after reports of Afghan women and children detained and imprisoned in Pakistani jails.
Following news of Afghan refugees, notably women and children, being held in detention facilities in Pakistan’s Sindh region, the former president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, also posted on his Twitter account his regrets regarding the predicament of Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
Former President Karzai requested Pakistan to “adopt a healthy approach befitting a good neighbor” with the Afghan immigrants in accordance with international norms and human rights.
The US official’s visit to Pakistan is hailed by social media users, particularly the Afghan refugees waiting to be resettled to the US, those eligible under the US’s P1/P2 program.
They express concern over the program’s sluggish development over the past year and complain that their children are deprived of receiving an education in Pakistan, the third country.
This comes as the Taliban-run Afghan Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, said on Tuesday that 30 undocumented Afghan migrants who had been incarcerated in Pakistani prisons had been released and deported to Afghanistan.
