Afghans | Pakistan

Afghans who fled the Taliban and have waited years for resettlement decision from the United States say their last path to safety has shut since Washington froze all Afghan immigration cases following a shooting near the White House. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said late on Wednesday it had halted processing for Afghan nationals indefinitely, hours after an Afghan man shot and critically wounded two National Guard soldiers in Washington. US President Donald Trump called the attack “an act of terror” and ordered a review of Afghans who entered the country during Joe Biden’s presidency. For Afghans sheltering in Pakistan, tens of thousands of whom are awaiting US resettlement decisions, the announcement felt like their last safe route had closed. Law enforcement members gather in a cordoned-off area after two National Guard members were reportedly shot near the White House in Washington, DC., the U.S on, November 26. — Reuters ‘If I go back you will hear news of my arrest or my death’ “I...

Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Pakistan (JUI-P) Senator Attaul Haq on Thursday stated that Afghans with Pakistani passports travel abroad and if they engage in crime, it reflects badly on Islamabad. Speaking during a meeting of the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights, he said, “Fifty per cent of Afghans travel abroad using Pakistani passports. Whenever Afghans are caught by authorities abroad, they are carrying Pakistani passports.” An official from the interior ministry acknowledged that this had occurred, but assured the committee that the practice had stopped. “In the past, when people were deported from Saudi Arabia, it was found that deportees were Afghan citizens carrying Pakistani passports.” Earlier today, the committee condemned Justice Ali Baqar Najafi’s remarks in the Noor Mukadam case that surfaced a day earlier, deeming them “ridiculous”. Justice Najafi, who is now part of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), observed that the Noor Mukadam case was the direct result of a “vice” spreading in soci...

ISLAMABAD: Chagai and Quetta in Balochistan and Attock in Punjab were the top three districts across the country where most of Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) holders or undocumented Afghan nationals were arrested or detained in over 10 months this year, says a UN refugee agency report. The highest number of arrests or detentions were made in 2025, the report says, adding that a total of 100,971 Afghans were arrested from Jan 1 to Nov 8, 2025, whereas 9,006 Afghans were detained in 2024. In 2023, 26,299 Afghans were arrested. The UNHCR report, which was released on Friday, says that prior to 2023, there was no data collected on the arrest and detention of Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) holders or undocumented Afghan nationals. Since January 2023, International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has started to collect this data. From Nov 2 to 8, a total of 13,380 Afghan nationals were arrested and detained, marking a 72 per cent increase compared to the previous week. Out of all arrests and detentions during Nov 2 to 8, th...

A high-level meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, was informed on Friday that as of October 16, a total of 1,477,592 Afghan nationals have been repatriated and the government will grant no further extension. A drive to expel more than 1.3 million Afghan nationals with Proof of Registration (PoR) card holders, the last category of refugees legally living in the country without visas, has been underway since Sept 1 this year. According to a statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the meeting’s attendees were told that only those Afghans who possess a valid Pakistani visa would be allowed to stay in Pakistan and the number of exit points on the Afghan side are being increased to make the repatriation process smoother and faster. “Officials informed the meeting that harboring Afghan nationals residing illegally in Pakistan or allowing them to stay in guesthouses is a criminal offense, and efforts are underway to identify such individuals. The public will be involved in the repatriat...

Police on Wednesday launched an operation to demolish hundreds of houses vacated by Afghans in Karachi’s Afghan Camp in the Sohrab Goth area to prevent “illegal occupation by rogue elements,” officials said. The land belongs to the Malir Development Authority (MDA). It comprises 3,117 houses, including those of 200 to 250 Pakistani families. Around 15,680 Afghan nationals were previously residing in the camp. Of them, 14,296 have returned to Afghanistan, while the remaining 1,384 are still living there and are being repatriated in phases. West Zone Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Irfan Ali Baloch told Dawn.com, “The government-owned land was spread over 200 acres, with 3,000 houses built to accommodate Afghans.” DIG Baloch further said he had written a letter to police authorities to set up a special committee comprising representatives of the city administration, police and other relevant institutions to prevent illegal occupation of the vacated government land. “It was the biggest camp of displaced Afghans w...

ISLAMABAD: The UN refugee agency has said that the expiry of Proof of Registration (PoR) cards grace period that ended on August 31, has triggered a sharp rise in the return of Afghans from Pakistan. A situation report of the UNHCR released on Friday said that in August alone, returns increased by 254 per cent, while deportations rose by 191pc as compared to July, coinciding with the start of the third phase of the ‘Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan’ (IFPR). The report says 531,700 Afghans have returned from Pakistan,as of September 4. Since April, more than 483,700 Afghans have returned from Pakistan to Afghanistan, including 145,200 in August alone, with some 55,000 making the journey in just the final four days of the month. The proportion of Proof of Registration (PoR) card holders among returnees has steadily increased, rising from 6 per cent in April to 21–23 per cent between May and July. UNHCR report reveals that as of Sept 4, around half a million refugees have returned In August, this share grew ...

BERLIN: German foreign ministry spokesman Josef Hinterseher has said more than 200 Afg­hans waiting to be offered sanctuary in Germany had been deported by Pakis­t­­an to their Taliban-run home country in re­cent days and the German government was urging Isla­m­­abad to allow them back. The deportees are part of a group previously offered refuge in Germany but now caught between Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s tougher immigration policy and a wave of expulsions from Pakistan. Hinterseher told reporters that Pakistani police re­­cently arrested “around 450” Afghans who were pre­viously accepted under the German scheme for peo­ple at risk from the Taliban. Of those, “211 peo­ple, according to our current information, have been deported to Afgha­nistan,” he added. Another “245 people were allowed to leave camps” in Pakistan where they had been gathered prior to their scheduled deportation, he said. “We are continuing to talk to Pakistan to facilitate the return of those who have already been deported.” Last week, tw...

Advocacy groups filed a criminal case against Germany’s foreign and interior ministers on Friday, accusing them of failing to protect Afghan nationals in Pakistan with German admission approvals from deportation to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Pakistan has begun deporting documented Afghan refugees ahead of a September 1 deadline, a move the United Nations warns could force more than one million to leave. The decision followed the interior ministry’s announcement on July 31 that PoR cardholders — the last category of Afghans legally residing in Pakistan without visas — became unlawful residents after their cards expired on June 30. A letter from the interior ministry, dated August 4, was sent to the chief secretaries and police chiefs of the four provinces, as well as Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, detailing the implementation of the ongoing Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan (IFRP). Among those at risk are more than 2,000 Afghans approved for relocation to Germany under programmes for peop...

QUETTA: Pakistan has issued a new call for Afghans living in the southwest to leave the country, triggering thousands to rush to the border, officials said. “We have received directives from the home department to launch a fresh drive to repatriate all Afghans… in a respectful and orderly manner,” Meharullah, a senior government official in Quetta, the capital of Balo­chistan province, told AFP. On Friday, there were “around 4,000 to 5,000 people at the Chaman border” waiting to return, said Habib Bingalzai, a senior government official in Chaman. Abdul Latif Hakimi, the head of Refugee Registration in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province across the border, said they were aware of an increase in returning Afghans on Friday. Millions of Afghans have poured into Pakistan over the past several decades, fleeing successive wars, as well as hundreds of thousands who arrived after the return of the Tali­ban government in 2021. A deportation drive first launched in 2023 was renewed in April when the government rescinded h...

Pindi police chief slams field teams' laxity over undocumented Afghans

The Taliban government said on Thursday it had not arrested or monitored Afghans involved in a secret British resettlement plan after a data breach was revealed this week. Thousands of Afghans who worked with the United Kingdom were brought to Britain with their families in a secret programme after a 2022 data breach put their lives at risk, the UK government revealed on Tuesday. The scheme was only revealed after the UK High Court lifted a super-gag order banning any reports of the events. UK Defence Minister John Healey said the leak was not revealed because of the risk that the Taliban authorities would obtain the data set and the lives of Afghans would be put at risk. “Nobody has been arrested for their past actions, nobody has been killed and nobody is being monitored for that,” the Afghan government’s deputy spokesman, Hamdullah Fitrat, told reporters on Thursday. “Reports of investigation and monitoring of a few people whose data has been leaked are false.” After the Taliban swept back to power in 2021...

ISLAMABAD: The UN special representative for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, on Wednesday proposed a ‘prioritised’ regional dialogue with Pakistan, Iran and Central Asian states to halt the disorderly return of Afghans and uphold the principle of voluntary, dignified and safe repatriation. The call comes as more than 1.3 million Afghans have returned to the country this year, straining communities where 70 percent of people live in poverty, the UN envoy said in a press statement. “Afghanistan’s stability hinges on shared responsibility,” Ms Otunbayeva said in the statement circulated by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). “We cannot afford indifference; the cost of inaction will be measured in lives lost and conflicts reignited.” Women and children face the gravest risks, returning not only to dire economic hardships but to a context where their access to basic services and social protections remains severely constrained, Ms Otunbayeva said. “Do not turn away,” she appealed to donors, ...

Some three million Afghans could return to their country this year, a UN refugee official said on Friday, warning that the repatriation flow is placing intense pressure on an already major humanitarian crisis. Iran and Pakistan have introduced new policies affecting displaced Afghans, with Tehran already having given 4m “illegal” Afghans until July 6 to leave Iranian territory. “What we are seeing is the undignified, disorganised and massive exodus of Afghans from both countries, which is generating enormous pressures on the homeland that is willing to receive them and yet utterly unprepared to do so,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Afghanistan Arafat Jamal said during a video press conference from Kabul. “Of concern to us is this scale, the intensity and the manner in which returns are occurring.” Over 1.6m Afghans have already returned from Pakistan and Iran this year, the large majority from Iran, Jamal added. The figure already exceeds the UNHCR’s initial forecasts...

More than 230,000 Afghans left Iran in June, most of them deported, as returns surge ahead of a Tehran-set deadline, the United Nations migration agency said on Monday. From June 1-28, 233,941 people returned from Iran to Afghanistan, International Organisation for Migration spokesman Avand Azeez Agha told AFP, with 131,912 returns recorded in the week of June 21-28 alone. “In total, from 1 January to 28 June 2025, 691,049 people have returned, 70 percent of whom were forcibly sent back,” he said. The number of returnees surged in recent weeks, as Afghans reported increased deportations and pressure to leave ahead of a July 6 deadline announced by Iran in May for Afghans without documents to leave the country. For several days last week, the number reached 30,000 per day, the IOM said. Figures have remained around 6-7,000 in recent days, Taliban border authorities and the UN said, with the numbers expected to increase ahead of the deadline.

Pakistan says it has expelled more than a million Afghans in the past two years, yet many have quickly attempted to return — preferring to take their chances dodging the law than struggle for existence in a homeland some had never even seen before. “Going back there would be sentencing my family to death,” said Hayatullah, a 46-year-old Afghan deported via the Torkham border crossing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in early 2024. Since April and a renewed deportation drive, some 200,000 Afghans have spilled over the two main border crossings from Pakistan, entering on trucks loaded with hastily packed belongings. But they carry little hope of starting over in the impoverished country, where girls are banned from school after the primary level. Hayatullah, a pseudonym, returned to Pakistan a month after being deported, travelling around 800 kilometres (500 miles) south to the Chaman border crossing in Balochistan, because for him, life in Afghanistan “had come to a standstill”. He paid a bribe to cross the Chaman fronti...

To Afghans worried the US shut its doors… return home, even if you served them for 30 years, said PM Akhund on Eid

More than 200,000 Afghans have left Pakistan since the government renewed a deportation drive in April, with Iran also stepping up expulsions of Afghans. Generations of Afghans have fled to Pakistan and Iran during decades of successive wars, seeking safety and better economic opportunities. Both governments have grown weary of large migrant populations and ordered millions to leave under the threat of arrest. Pakistan has launched a strict campaign to evict more than 800,000 Afghans who have had their residence permits cancelled, including some who were born in the country or lived there for decades. According to the interior ministry, more than 135,000 Afghans left Pakistan in April, while around 67,000 departed in May and more than 3,000 were sent back in the first two days of June. The number of returnees has slowed ahead of the Eidul Azha holiday later this week, but some Afghans were still crossing the main border points from Pakistan today. “We left behind our orchards” and livelihoods, 21-year-old far...

PEN International, an association of writers, called on the government to immediately halt the mass deportation of Afghans from Pakistan, including writers, journalists and others at risk of persecution from the Taliban, according to a statement. As of May 18, a total of 55,865 Afghan nationals including 35,975 ACC holders and 19,890 illegal migrants have left for Afghanistan since April 1, the day the second phase began after the deadline for repatriation of registered Afghan nationals ended on March 31. The PEN International-led joint statement, signed by freedom of expression and human rights organisations, concerns the recent acceleration in the mass deportation of Afghans from Pakistan, including at-risk writers, journalists, artists, human rights defenders and others at risk of persecution from the Taliban for their peaceful expression. More than a dozen organisations called on the government to “immediately halt the arbitrary mass deportation of Afghan nationals in line with the country’s human rights ...