Afghan musicians fear jail, violence or worse as Pakistan issues deportation ultimatum

Ustad Nadeem Baksh, a classical singer from Afghanistan, paid Pakistani police a bribe to avoid deportation after law enforcement raided his home in the city of Rawalpindi.

But he worries the bribe of 50,000 rupees, or about $175, has only bought the family of 14 a limited amount of time.

“I don’t know how long we will be safe here before we are forced to move to another city – or back to Afghanistan,” Baksh told Context by phone from his rented two-room home in Peshawar, near the Afghan border, where his family relocated after the raid last month.

Baksh is one of thousands of Afghan refugees in Pakistan who have gone into hiding or are preparing to leave after the Pakistani government on March 7 ordered Afghans without official permission to stay to leave the country by the end of the month.

The deportation order comes amid a period of tensions between the neighbours, with Islamabad accusing the Taliban of allowing an extremist group to use Afghan territory to carry out attacks on Pakistani targets.

Afghan musicians have faced the ire of the Taliban, which follows a hardline interpretation of Islam, after it seized power in 2021. Music has been banned, and the authorities have destroyed instruments, closed music schools and assaulted musicians. They...

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