Afghan Refugees Forced Out of Pakistan Amid Rising Tensions with Taliban

Under the pale autumn sun, the sound of crying children blends with the rumble of truck engines at the Chaman border crossing—a dusty, windswept divide between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Here, a human river flows in one direction: out of Pakistan. Many thousands of Afghans, some of whom have built entire lives over decades, are being forced to abandon their homes, livelihoods, and a sense of belonging, compelled to move to a homeland that feels more foreign and forbidding than the one they are leaving behind.

Their heartbreak is a tangible cargo, carried alongside their few remaining belongings: rolled-up carpets, plastic chairs, cooking pots, and the frayed blankets that once warmed them in a country that now rejects them. They are the human collateral in a bitter and escalating political dispute between Islamabad and the Taliban regime in Kabul.

A Lifetime Unraveled in an Instant

Among the endless stream of families waiting to cross is 42-year-old Zahra. Fully covered by a blue burqa, she clutches her youngest daughter, her knuckles white. Her story is a generational echo of conflict. Her parents were among the millions who fled the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, finding precarious sanctuary in a refugee village in Quetta, southwestern Pakistan. It was there that Zahra was born, raised, and built her world.

“This is the only home I have ever known,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “My parents are buried here. My memories are here. Now, we are being untethered from it all.”

This month, Pakistan announced the closure of all 54 official Afghan refugee villages nationwide, a drastic escalation of a campaign initiated in late 2023 to remove what it calls “illegal foreigners.” For families like Zahra’s, the announcement was a death sentence for their settled lives.

“The sudden expulsion of Afghan refugees by Pakistani police has put the lives of dozens of people in danger,” said Aziz Gull, an Afghan human rights activist based in Pakistan. “Those who fled to Pakistan to escape terror, oppression, and violence are now falling into the hands of the Taliban regime because of Pakistan’s actions.”

From Hospitality to Hostility

There was a time when Pakistan’s generosity towards Afghan refugees was a point of national pride, a testament to shared ethnicity and faith. For over four decades, through the Soviet war, the brutal civil war of the 1990s, and the US-led invasion in 2001, successive waves of Afghans found a fragile haven. They enrolled in schools, joined cricket clubs, started small businesses, and wove themselves into the fabric of cities like Karachi, Quetta, and Peshawar.

But that era has ended. Amid an increasingly bitter row with the Taliban—culminating in intense and deadly border clashes last month—the Pakistani government has reframed its long-term guests as a security threat. The policy shift is stark and, according to experts, deliberately harsh.

“The Afghan Taliban, by igniting border clashes, have made life more difficult for Afghan refugees, who were already in a hard place. The Pakistanis have become more determined, dare I say more ruthless, with the expulsion program,” Osama Malik, a senior humanitarian and refugee law expert, told DW.

While a tense truce is now in place, the damage to the refugees’ plight is done. Pakistani officials, like senior Interior Ministry official Talal Chaudhry, defend the policy with finality: “For four decades, we have welcomed Afghans… But this cannot continue indefinitely… any foreigners residing in the country illegally will be deported immediately.”

“We Were Born Here”: The Agony of the Stateless

The policy’s cruelty lies in its blanket application, affecting even those with official documentation and those who have never set foot in Afghanistan. The UNHCR has criticized the move, noting it puts even those with Proof of Registration (PoR) cards at risk.

“We are concerned about women and girls being forced to return to a country where their rights to work and education are at risk,” said Qaiser Khan Afridi, the UNHCR’s spokesperson in Pakistan.

The anguish of this statelessness is etched on the face of Abdul Rehman, a 44-year-old fruit seller from Quetta. He has already dismantled the home he built over 20 years.

“We were born in this country and have established our lives here, so it comes as a sudden shock to hear that we must leave,” he said, gesturing to his children. “They are enrolled in a Pakistani school and speak Urdu. My daughter’s education will be ended in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. They watch Pakistani TV shows. How will they survive there?”

His question hangs in the air, unanswered. For the younger generation, the expulsion is a particularly brutal severance. Fatima, a 22-year-old medical student, had to abandon her studies just months before qualifying.

“I left my home in Quetta two days ago and am going to an unfamiliar place,” she said, her voice thick with despair. “My dream was to work in a hospital. Now I am uncertain about my future in an undemocratic country where girls’ education is banned.”

A Bleak Homecoming

The Afghanistan they are returning to is a nation in profound crisis. Ruled by a Taliban regime that has imposed draconian restrictions on women and girls, the country is also grappling with a crippling humanitarian emergency, including widespread food shortages and an economy in freefall.

“Afghanistan is not prepared to handle such a large influx of returnees,” warns the UNHCR’s Afridi. “Most families have nowhere to go, and many are returning to regions still recovering from conflict.”

As the sun sets over the mountains near the border, a fleeting moment of normalcy emerges. Children, resilient in their innocence, play tag around the trucks stacked high with their families’ lives. Their laughter briefly masks the quiet despair of their parents.

Zahra’s eyes, however, remain fixed on the horizon, on the border post she must now cross. “We have crossed so many borders in our lives,” she reflects, her gaze steady. “But this one feels final.”

Her family steps forward as their names are called. Within minutes, she is swallowed by the flow of people heading toward Afghanistan—a land of ancestral memory but personal unknown, a future they cannot imagine. The graves of her parents remain behind in Pakistani soil.

For the Pakistani government, this is a matter of state policy and security. But for families like Zahra’s, it is the end of a lifetime spent hoping to belong, their lives and dreams crushed in a geopolitical row not of their making.

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