By our correspondent
CHAGAI: Authorities in Balochistan’s remote Chagai district have emptied and begun dismantling Gridhi Jungle, the province’s biggest and oldest Afghan refugee settlement, in a sweeping operation that underscored Pakistan’s accelerating push to repatriate undocumented Afghan nationals.
The camp, a sprawling expanse of mud homes, makeshift shelters and informal markets that had grown into a small township over the decades, was believed to have housed nearly 70,000 people at its peak. Officials said the operation had followed days of registration and documentation as families were lined up, logged and escorted towards the border crossing into Afghanistan.
Many had lived in the camp for years, some for generations, and the departure unfolded in scenes marked by exhaustion, confusion and quiet resignation. Local administrators insisted that all those leaving had been formally recorded before being transported, describing the process as part of the state’s broader mandate to enforce repatriation rules introduced earlier this year.
Footage circulating from the desolate plain showed bulldozers moving across the now-abandoned site, flattening walls and pulling down the skeletal remains of homes built from whatever material desperate families could find. Officials said the clearance was being carried out in phases, with each section of the camp demolished once the last residents had been moved out.
They added that the site would not be reopened and that the operation would continue until every structure was removed. The dismantling of Gridhi Jungle signaled that further repatriations were imminent, as authorities prepared to move ahead with the next round of removals.
