September 12, 2025
By Ismail Gul Afridi
“When I went to school for the last time, all my classmates were very sad, and it was an extremely difficult moment for me too,” 12-year-old Afghan refugee Zabihullah recalls as his family joins a long convoy of overloaded trucks towards Torkham border
KHYBER
The sun beats down mercilessly on the long convoy of overloaded trucks crawling along the Grand Trunk (GT) Road toward Torkham border crossing. Inside these vehicles, packed with household belongings and shattered dreams, sit families whose lives have been upended by forces beyond their control. These are Afghan refugees holding Proof of Registration (POR) cards, embarking on what may be the most difficult journey of their lives – returning to a homeland that exists more in memory than reality.
For 17-year-old Syed Muhammad from Fateh Jang in District Attock (Punjab), the journey stretching over two days and two nights, has been a harsh introduction to displacement. Crammed into a cargo truck with two other families, he has experienced first-hand the indignities that mark this exodus: no shade along the route, no rest stops, no clean water, and no proper restrooms. The border at Torkham now looms ahead, but even there, a further three to five hours must be spent in baggage inspection and registration await.
“Life in Pakistan has become impossible now,” Muhammad explains, his voice carrying the weight of premature adulthood. “The police would arrest people and deport them, leaving their families and businesses behind without anyone to look after them.”
His story is one among hundreds of thousands. After four and a half decades of refuge in Pakistan, Afghan migrants are facing a reality that many never imagined: forced return to a country that, for many of the younger generation, exists only in their parents’ stories.
A generation caught between two worlds
The human cost of this mass displacement becomes most apparent in the faces of young people like 12-year-old Zabihullah. Until recently, he was a fifth-grade student at a government school in Fateh Jang. His world revolved around his classroom, his friends, and the familiar routines of Pakistani school life. Now, he travels toward a country he has never seen, carrying only hope that he will be able to continue his education.
“When I went to school for the last time, all my classmates were very sad, and it was an extremely difficult moment for me too,” Zabihullah recalls. The pain in his young voice reflects a broader tragedy – an entire generation being severed from the only home they have ever known.
This generational divide runs deep through the refugee community. While older migrants retain some connection to Afghanistan through memory and family stories, their children and grandchildren face the prospect of building lives in what is, for them, a foreign country. They speak Urdu as fluently as Pashto or Dari, understand Pakistani cultural references better than Afghan ones, and have formed their identities within the complex social fabric of Pakistan.
For these young people, the return to Afghanistan represents not homecoming but exile – exile from the schools where they studied, the neighborhoods where they played, and the friends who shaped their adolescent years. They carry Pakistani educational credentials that may not be recognized across the border, speak with accents that mark them as foreigners in their supposed homeland, and harbor dreams that were nurtured in Pakistani soil.
Failed assurances only increase refugees’ fear
The announcement by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur that no Afghan refugee would be forcibly evicted from the province seemed to offer a glimmer of hope. Speaking to journalists, Gandapur emphasized that several letters had been sent to the federal government regarding this commitment. The provincial government’s stance suggested recognition of both the humanitarian crisis and the practical impossibility of sudden mass displacement.
However, the gap between political assurances and ground reality has proven vast. Despite these public commitments, fear continues to grip Afghan refugee communities not only in Punjab and Sindh but also across various districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa itself. Families continue to arrive at Torkham border crossing daily, their decisions driven not by official deportation orders but by a climate of uncertainty that has made normal life impossible.
The federal government’s third phase of the Afghan refugee repatriation program had set August 31 as the deadline for voluntary return of 1.45 million POR cardholders. While the word “voluntary” suggested choice, the lived experience of most refugees tells a different story – one of mounting pressure, daily harassment, and the gradual erosion of any sense of security or belonging.
This disconnect between official policy and implementation reflects broader institutional challenges within Pakistan’s governance structure. Provincial governments may issue statements of protection, but local police stations operate according to different directives. Federal immigration policies may emphasize voluntary return, but community-level enforcement often resembles something far more coercive.
A financially crippling journey to Afghanistan
The journey home has become not just emotionally devastating but financially crippling. The economics of displacement reveal another layer of exploitation faced by vulnerable populations. Cargo truck rental rates have doubled or even tripled, taking advantage of desperate families with few alternatives.
Syed Muhammad’s family, surviving on his manual labor income, scraped together Rs 500,000 to share truck space with two other families traveling to Laghman province. This represents months of earnings for a family already living at the subsistence level. The journey to Mazar-e-Sharif, which previously cost Rs 300,000-400,000, now demands over one million rupees – an impossible sum for most refugee families.
Gul Muhammad, a truck driver, explains the market dynamics with blunt honesty. “A significant number of large vehicles are waiting on the other side of the border in Afghanistan to come to Pakistan, and there’s a severe shortage of vehicles here.” His own rate to Jalalabad – Rs 450,000 for two or three families – reflects what he considers fair pricing, given that obtaining travel and vehicle documentation alone costs up to Rs 100,000.
This economic squeeze forces impossible choices on families already facing displacement. Some sell their small businesses at a loss, others liquidate household items accumulated over decades, and many simply abandon property they cannot afford to transport. The result is a form of double dispossession – first from their homeland decades ago, now from the lives they built in exile.
The transformation of displacement into a market commodity reveals the broader structures that profit from human suffering. Transport contractors, documentation facilitators, and border intermediaries have all found ways to extract value from desperation, turning what should be humanitarian assistance into yet another economic transaction.
Lost connections, uncertain futures
Perhaps the most poignant aspect of this mass return lies in what has been lost during the decades of exile. Siraj, traveling from Kohat refugee camp to Torkham border with his relatives, embodies this disconnection. His furniture business in Pakistan provided stability and identity – he was an entrepreneur, a community member, someone with standing and purpose. The daily summons to police stations, where he was repeatedly told to leave Pakistan immediately, gradually stripped away this sense of belonging.
“My business has been badly affected for several months now,” Siraj explains, “and now in Afghanistan, not only business but even building a house is impossible due to tribal disputes”. His words capture a cruel irony: forced to leave a place where he built a livelihood, he returns to a place where livelihood seems impossible.
This loss of social capital represents perhaps the most profound cost of displacement. Over four and a half decades, Afghan refugees in Pakistan developed complex networks of relationships, business connections, and community ties. They became part of Pakistan’s economic and social fabric, contributing to its growth while building their own sense of place and purpose.
The return to Afghanistan means severing these connections and attempting to rebuild them in a context that has changed dramatically since their departure. The Afghanistan of today bears little resemblance to the country many refugees left in the 1980s and 1990s. Political structures have transformed, economic systems have evolved, and social relationships have been reconfigured by decades of conflict and change.
For many returnees, the tribal and family networks that once provided support and identity in Afghanistan have either disappeared or become inaccessible. Property disputes that were left unresolved at the time of exodus have now become even more complicated. Traditional livelihoods may no longer exist, and new forms of economic activity may require skills and connections that returning refugees lack.
The infrastructure of return
The physical infrastructure supporting this mass movement tells its own story of inadequate preparation and insufficient resources. Registration and temporary accommodation camps established in Jamrud and Landi Kotal tehsils of Khyber district face complaints about lack of facilities. These camps, meant to ease the transition, instead become bottlenecks where families experience additional hardship.
The restriction on small vehicles approaching the border forces families to unload their belongings three to four kilometers away and transfer everything to handcarts – a final indignity that transforms arrival into ordeal. Security officials at Landi Kotal deny journalists permission to cover the process, creating an information vacuum around what may be one of the largest population movements in South Asian history.
This media restriction reflects broader tensions between transparency and security concerns, but it also means that the human stories of displacement unfold largely outside public scrutiny. Previous conflicts between security officials and journalists over coverage of Afghan refugee return processes suggest institutional discomfort with external observation of these operations.
The contrast between the scale of displacement and the inadequacy of supporting infrastructure reveals systemic failures in both countries. Pakistan’s ability to manage the departure of 1.45 million people appears as limited as Afghanistan’s capacity to absorb their return. The result is suffering that could be mitigated with better planning and greater international support.
International abandonment
The decision by international organizations to suspend financial assistance adds another layer of hardship to an already desperate situation. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced on its official social media pages that financial support for refugees coming to Afghanistan has been suspended due to restrictions on female staff working in the country.
This suspension represents a collision between international humanitarian principles and Taliban governance policies, with returning refugees caught in the crossfire. The loss of financial assistance – however modest it may have been – removes one of the few safety nets available to families attempting to rebuild their lives in Afghanistan.
The international community’s response to this crisis has been notably inadequate. While the forced return of over one million people represents a humanitarian emergency of significant proportions, global attention and resources have been focused elsewhere. The suspension of aid programs due to gender restrictions, while principled, leaves vulnerable populations without support at their moment of greatest need.
This abandonment reflects broader patterns in international humanitarian response, where political considerations often override human suffering. The Taliban’s restrictions on women’s rights are indeed unconscionable, but the decision to punish these policies by withdrawing support from returning refugees creates additional victims without addressing the underlying problems.
Statistics of displacement
According to the International Organization for Migration, the process of forced return began in September 2023 with undocumented migrants, followed by holders of Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC), and finally POR cardholders who were given until August 31 to leave. The organization reports that approximately 1.1 million refugees have already returned to Afghanistan, representing one of the largest forced population movements in recent South Asian history.
These numbers, however, cannot capture the individual tragedies embedded within this mass displacement. Each of the 1.1 million represents a life disrupted, dreams deferred, and connections severed. Behind every statistic lies a story like that of young Zabihullah leaving his classmates, or Siraj abandoning his furniture business, or Syed Muhammad’s family spending their life savings on transportation to an uncertain future.
The scale of displacement also raises questions about Afghanistan’s absorption capacity. The country’s economy, already strained by international sanctions and Taliban governance challenges, must now accommodate over one million returnees. These are not simply numbers to be processed through camps and registration centers – they are individuals and families requiring housing, employment, education, and healthcare in a system already struggling to serve its existing population.
As trucks continue to roll toward Torkham border crossing, they carry more than household goods and displaced families – they transport the accumulated dreams and disappointments of four and a half decades of exile. The Afghan refugees returning to their homeland face not just the practical challenges of rebuilding lives in a changed country, but the deeper psychological trauma of severing connections with the only home many have ever known.
The failure to find a dignified, voluntary solution to this displacement represents a broader failure of regional cooperation and international humanitarian response. Pakistan’s decision to force the return of established refugee populations, despite provincial government assurances, reflects the political costs of hosting displaced populations for extended periods. Afghanistan’s limited capacity to absorb returnees, combined with international aid suspensions, creates conditions for continued suffering.
For the young people caught in this crisis – students like Zabihullah who must abandon their education, workers like Syed Muhammad who face economic uncertainty, entrepreneurs like Siraj who lose their livelihoods – the return to Afghanistan represents not homecoming but another form of displacement. They journey toward a homeland that exists more in official documentation than in lived experience, carrying Pakistani memories into an Afghan future that remains uncertain and unwelcoming.
The trucks rolling toward Torkham carry the weight of broken promises – Pakistan’s promise of temporary refuge that lasted four decades, Afghanistan’s promise of homeland for those who no longer recognize it, and the international community’s promise of humanitarian protection that dissolves when political convenience demands it. In the dust clouds raised by these overloaded vehicles, we see not just the movement of people but the failure of systems designed to protect human dignity in times of crisis.
As these families cross the border into an uncertain future, they leave behind not just houses and businesses but the accumulated social capital of four and a half decades – the friendships, community connections, and sense of belonging that made Pakistan home for a generation of Afghan refugees. Their departure impoverishes both countries: Pakistan loses productive citizens who contributed to its economy and society, while Afghanistan receives returnees whose skills and perspectives were shaped by experiences it does not share.
The story of Afghan refugees’ forced return is ultimately a story about the price of displacement – not just the immediate economic costs or physical hardships, but the deeper human cost of severing connections, abandoning dreams, and forcing people to rebuild their lives in contexts that no longer feel like home. It is a price paid not just by the displaced families themselves, but by the communities they leave behind and the societies they must now attempt to join.
In the end, the trucks rolling toward Torkham carry the contradictions of our regional and global systems – systems that create displacement, sustain it for decades, and then abandon those they claim to protect when political calculations change. The human cost of these contradictions is measured not in statistics but in the faces of children like Zabihullah, leaving behind classmates and dreams, journeying toward a homeland that exists only in their parents’ memories and their own uncertain hopes.