by Misbah Saba Malik

ISLAMABAD, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Khurram Saeedi, an Afghan refugee running a garment business in Islamabad, got married to his Pakistani girlfriend last year in a ceremony attended by both Pakistani and Afghan nationals.

"We faced strong resistance from my wife's family. Her parents were not willing to give her hand in marriage to an Afghan refugee. They were afraid that someday I would be forced to return to my country and the fate of their daughter would hang in balance," said Saeedi.

"Somehow she convinced them to allow her to marry me, but they are still not happy with her decision. They believe either my wife will lose me or they will lose their daughter if she decided to go with me to Afghanistan if the Pakistani government forced me to leave their country," Saeedi explained.

Saeedi added that the concerns of his wife's family are justified, as he himself is not so sure about his future. "I want to continue my life in Pakistan. I have opened my eyes in Pakistan, this is my motherland. I dine, dress and think like locals. There is no difference between me and them so I don't think I should be forced to leave here," he said.

According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Pakistan is the second largest refugee-hosting country in the world, with some 1.4 million registered refugees. Pakistani official estimates show that overall, about 2.5 million registered and unregistered Afghan refugees are living in the country.

Samad Khan, an official with the UNHCR, in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told Xinhua that in most cases, Afghan refugees have been living in Pakistan for three generations. "They have business here, their children study in schools here, and they have become so used to the life here that they never want to go back to their motherland."

"About 80 percent of Afghans living in Pakistan are those who were either born in Pakistan or moved here at a very young age. They don't know much about Afghanistan, many of them have never been to their native land even once in their lives. They have adapted themselves so much to Pakistani life that from the way they dress and speak you can hardly tell that they are not Pakistani nationals," Khan said.

After spending so many years in Pakistan, the Afghan refugees have integrated into Pakistani society. They started dressing and eating like the locals and at the same time passed their traditions on to the locals.

"We have adopted their (Pakistanis) Briyani (spicy rice cooked with meat) and passed on our Kabuli Pulao (low spice rice cooked with meat, carrots and raisins) to them," Atif Amin, an Afghan refugee pursuing a bachelor's degree at the Peshawar University, told Xinhua.

Amin said that his family has been living in Pakistan for 30 years. He was born and bred in Pakistan and he feels very attached to the country, but his father has spent his childhood and some part of his youth in Afghanistan so he has found it very hard to adjust to local life even after all the years.

His father repeatedly asks him to move back to Afghanistan with him after the completion of his studies.

Ilhama Qiamy, 23, recently completed her bachelor's degree in economics at the University of Peshawar owing to the quota allocated by the Pakistani government for excellent Afghan refugee students.

Qiamy told Xinhua that she was three when she sneaked into Pakistan with her family. The restlessness in her native land drove her family to bid adieu to their ancestral land and get settled in Pakistan.

"I don't remember Afghanistan because I was so young when I left for Pakistan. The earliest memories of my childhood are studying in a Pakistani school and playing on a swing tied to a tree in front of my house in Pakistan."

Qiamy said that her family and herself are fond of Pakistani culture. Her mother and sisters dress like Pakistani women and even when she visited her hometown in Afghanistan some five years ago, she preferred to wear Pakistani attire there. "I feel more comfortable in Pakistani clothes. Women in my province in Afghanistan wear veiled dress. I wore that once or twice for fun when I visited Afghanistan, but I feel more comfortable in Pakistani attire."

"My mother cannot speak or understand Urdu language, but she always follows Pakistani cooking shows on TV to have an idea of the recipes of Pakistani food, and later cooks them at home."

Qiamy told Xinhua that they have completely absorbed themselves into the Pakistani society as her father and brothers work in the country and all her friends are Pakistanis.

"I was born in Afghanistan, but I found myself in Pakistan. This country provided me shelter and gave me loving friends when there was restlessness in my native place. This land allowed me to live peacefully here. But despite all the love and warmth I received from here, Pakistan sometimes hurt me, unintentionally, though," Qiamy said, explaining that during the last semester at her university it was announced that all the brilliant students will get laptop from a scheme launched by the Pakistani prime minister.

"Despite being one of the brightest students in my class, I could not receive one because I was an Afghan refugee and not a Pakistani national and no matter how hard I worked, there was no one to appreciate my efforts," a tearful Qiamy told Xinhua.

Afghan refugees resemble people living in the northwest Pashtun belt of Pakistan located near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Their language and culture are almost the same, making it easy for the refugees to penetrate into Pakistan. Afghan refugees who were repatriated to their country took many cultural facets of Pakistan back home with them.

One of the most prominent things is the game of cricket. Refugees who lived in Pakistan played and watched cricket with locals and formed a national team upon return to their home country.

According to a local daily, an Afghan elder claimed that 400,000 refugees had returned to Afghanistan in 2017 under the voluntary return program, but out of them some 100,000 had come back as the Afghan government did not provide them with the required facilities.

According to the UNHCR, more than 5.2 million Afghan refugees have returned to their militancy-plagued country over the past 16 years.

Pakistan has told Afghan refugees to leave the country before June 30. The government has set such deadlines many times before, only to extend them, however, it is still unclear whether Pakistani authorities will grant another extension to the refugees or not.

Ruvendrini Menikdiwela, head of UNHCR in Pakistan, however, is hopeful that they will win another extension from the Pakistani caretaker set up for Afghan refugees.

Pakistan feels that Afghan refugees are a social and economic burden and this is the reason why they are repeatedly told to leave the country. The country does not have enough resources to feed and provide basic needs including water, electricity, health, education and food to its own population and under such conditions accommodating over 2 million refugees adds more woes to the government.

On the other hand, Afghans who have been living in Pakistan since the Soviet invasion find it very hard to reassimilate in Afghanistan now. Their kids have never been to Afghanistan, they have settled their lives in Pakistan and they believe if they are forced to leave the country, nothing but socioeconomic problems will be waiting for them back in Afghanistan.

"When Pakistan-Afghan relations become tense we feel so concerned and fear that someday someone will tell us to pack our bags and go back. I was born here, so I take Pakistan as my home, I love its streets and roads. But despite all that, in documents I am still an 'outsider'," Amin said.

"No matter how many shalwar qamiz (national dress of Pakistan) I have in my wardrobe, and how many times a month I eat biryani and chaat (a kind of Pakistani food), no matter how many deep friendships I have made with locals here, I will still remain under the 'other and irrelevant' category in this country. This feeling of fear gives me many sleepless nights," Amin told Xinhua.