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Pakistan's new deportation directive forces thousands of Afghans back home
Pakistan launched its first deportation drive in 2023, which was renewed in April 2025.
Pakistan on Friday issued a new order asking Afghan nationals residing in its southwestern regions to leave the country. This prompted thousands to rush toward the Afghan-Pakistan border in an attempt to return to their home nation.
"We have received directives from the Home Department to launch a fresh drive to repatriate all Afghans... in a respectful and orderly manner," AFP quoted Mehar Ullah, a senior government official in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, as saying.
“There were reportedly around 4,000 to 5,000 people at the Chaman border on Friday, waiting to return,” said senior government official Habib Bingalzai.
The province of Balochistan borders Afghanistan and reportedly shares significant cultural and ethnic ties with it.
Abdul Latif Hakimi, Head of Refugee Registration in Afghanistan's Kandahar province, confirmed they were aware of a surge in returning Afghans on Friday.
Over the past decades, massive numbers of Afghans have crossed into Pakistan, reported AFP. These refugees fled successive wars, and hundreds of thousands more arrived after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021.
Pakistan launched its first deportation drive in 2023, which was renewed in April 2025. At that time, the Pakistani government rescinded hundreds of thousands of residence permits for Afghans, threatening to arrest anyone who did not leave.
More than one million Afghan nationals have reportedly left Pakistan since 2023, including over 200,000 since April this year.
Pakistan labels Afghans “terrorists and criminals”
In April, Pakistan forcibly expelled over 800,000 Afghans with temporary residence permits — some of whom were born in the country and had lived there for decades — referring to them as “terrorists and criminals.”
Pakistan’s national security forces say they are battling a growing insurgency: ethnic nationalists in Balochistan in the southwest and the Pakistani Taliban and its affiliates in the northwest.
According to AFP, analysts believe the expulsions are aimed at pressuring Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government to rein in cross-border militancy.
In 2024, Pakistan recorded its highest number of deaths from militant attacks in a decade. The government has frequently accused Afghan nationals of being involved in such violence.
Public sentiment
Many Pakistani citizens reportedly support the deportation drives, having grown weary of hosting large refugee populations amid the country’s own worsening security and economic crises.
Dimming future for Afghan refugees
In July 2025, Iran also launched a large-scale deportation campaign, under which more than 1.5 million Afghan nationals were forcibly sent back across the border.
Now grappling with a long-term humanitarian crisis and nearly four years under Taliban rule, Afghanistan continues to be deprived of basic human rights. The regime has banned women from most education and employment, and the country remains burdened by the imposition of a strict interpretation of Islamic law.
