Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani among thousands of Afghans holding Pakistani passport

The News has uncovered, through Ministry of Interior sources, that the name of Afghanistan’s Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani is among the list of thousands of Afghan citizens who had Pakistani passports until recently.

Sirajuddin Haqqani was issued a Pakistani passport for five years, which he used to visit many countries; including Qatar where he negotiated with the American government, which led to the Doha Agreement and the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan.

Two officials who issued passports to Haqqani have been arrested, one of whom had retired from service when the proceedings against him began.

An official acquainted with the record-cleansing operation said 30,000 to 40,000 passports issued to Afghan nationals have been blocked.

Passport offices in various cities issued passports to Afghan citizens, including Karachi and Thatta in Sindh. Without naming the cities of Balochistan and KP, the official said that passport offices established in different cities have also been found involved in the matter.

Geo reports that Haqqani’s case was unveiled when a Peshawar-based journalist was on the same flight that Haqqani took to Doha. At the immigration counter, Haqqani had shown a Pakistani passport as his travel document. The aforementioned journalist was surprised to see him with that passport. But it was in August this year when the journalist drew the attention of the passport authorities in Pakistan about what he witnessed during a discussion. The information proved to be correct.

An inquiry was then conducted into the matter which revealed that the passport was issued from Peshawar during the PTI regime.

The passport-issuing officer said he was contacted by a man who identified himself as a senior military official from an intelligence agency and asked to issue a travel document for Haqqani.

When the passport officer was asked to find out the identity of the army officer, he said that he was not sure who the man actually was as he had given instructions over the phone. After that, departmental action was initiated against the passport officer and also against the employee who had printed the passport.

Reportedly both the persons are in jail. This is also confirmed by the information received from Saudi authorities.

Initially, the Saudi authorities raised the issue with the government of Pakistan that Afghan citizens have obtained Pakistani passports to get jobs in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government provided copies of passports, and as the government took notice of the case, it was found that the number of such cases is, in fact, more than 12,000. The passports of these individuals were revoked and those found to have used forged documents were deported to Afghanistan.