Afghanistan’s Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani was among thousands of Afghan citizens who had Pakistani passports until recently. The News has learnt from interior ministry officials that these passports were issued from different cities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Sindh.
Haqqani was issued a Pakistani passport for five years which he used to travel abroad, particularly to Qatar for negotiations with the United States for the signing of the Doha Agreement that resulted in the latter’s exit from Afghanistan. Two passport officials involved in issuing Haqqani’s passport have been arrested, one of whom had retired from service by the time the action was started against him.
A well-placed official who is privy to the ongoing cleansing of the record has said that around 30,000 – 40,000 passports issued to Afghan nationals have been blocked.” Passport offices in different cities — like Thatta and Karachi in Sindh — are said to have facilitated them. Without naming the specific cities of Balochistan and KP, the official said that passport offices in different cities in these provinces were also found involved in this malpractice.
As for Haqqani’s case, the authorities got wind of the matter through a Peshawar-based journalist who happened to be on the same flight to Doha as Haqqani. At the immigration counter there, Haqqani showed his Pakistani passport as a proof of travel document. This left the journalist puzzled over how Haqqani had managed to get a Pakistani passport.
But it was only in August this year that the journalist brought the matter to the attention of passport authorities during a discussion. When checked, his information proved correct and an inquiry into the matter determined that the passport was issued from Peshawar during the PTI government’s tenure. The issuing officer said he was approached by someone who introduced himself as a serving senior officer from an intelligence agency and who then asked for the production of travel documents for Haqqani.
