Pakistan has forced more than 5.4 million Afghans out of the country since October 2023, in what has become one of the largest mass expulsions of refugees in recent history, driven by a volatile mix of security fears tied to cross-border militancy, deepening economic strain, and an escalating conflict with Afghanistan’s Taliban government.
The current wave of deportations traces back to Pakistan’s “Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan,” first announced in October 2023, when Islamabad ordered all foreign nationals without valid documentation to leave the country or face forced removal. At the time, an estimated 3.8 to 4.4 million Afghans were living in Pakistan, according to United Nations and government figures, with Afghans accounting for roughly 98 per cent of the country’s foreign nationals.
Pakistani officials justified the policy by pointing to a sharp rise in militant attacks, including two dozen suicide bombings since the start of that year, saying 14 of them had been carried out by Afghan nationals.
More than 146,000 Afghans have already been deported from Pakistan in 2026 alone, according to Human Rights Watch, adding to over 1 million forced returns recorded in 2025 and building on the more than 2.4 million Afghans expelled since the policy first took effect.
A Security Rationale Rooted in Cross-Border Militancy
Pakistani officials have consistently framed the deportations as a necessary response to worsening security conditions along the country’s western border, accusing Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government of providing safe haven to militant groups, including the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, as well as separatist factions operating in Balochistan province. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, eight of the eleven militants involved in a pair of recent attacks on Pakistani military installations in Balochistan were identified as Afghan nationals, a detail Islamabad has cited as evidence of the threat it says Afghan territory continues to pose.
The security rationale predates the current crackdown by nearly a decade. Pakistan deported roughly 600,000 Afghan migrants in a similar crackdown in 2016, a mass expulsion Human Rights Watch described at the time as among the largest unlawful forced returns of refugees anywhere in the world in recent memory.
An Economy Under Strain Compounds the Pressure
Analysts say Pakistan’s deepening economic troubles have also shaped the political climate surrounding the deportations, even if security concerns remain the officially stated justification. The country has faced one of its worst economic crises since independence in 1947, marked by soaring food and fuel prices, a rapidly depreciating rupee, and chronic power shortages tied to years of underinvestment in infrastructure — conditions that pushed Islamabad to seek a $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. Public opinion within Pakistan has remained firmly opposed to continued large-scale Afghan migration throughout this period, limiting the political space either of the country’s major parties has had to soften the policy.
Conflict With the Taliban Has Escalated the Crackdown
The pace of deportations accelerated sharply after armed clashes broke out between Pakistani and Afghan forces in October 2025, according to Human Rights Watch, which documented a marked escalation in abusive raids, arbitrary detentions and forced returns following the outbreak of fighting. Pakistan closed key border crossings, including the vital Torkham crossing, in the wake of the violence, before reopening them more recently largely to facilitate continued deportations rather than to restore normal trade and travel.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan had documented at least 76 civilian deaths and 213 injuries as of March, most from cross-border shelling tied to the fighting, underscoring how directly the diplomatic and military rupture between the two governments has fed into the humanitarian toll facing Afghan civilians on both sides of the border.
Rights Groups Warn of Life-Threatening Consequences
Human rights organisations have repeatedly and forcefully condemned the deportations, warning that many of those being forced back to Afghanistan face direct threats to their safety under Taliban rule. Refugees International said the policy had put lives at immediate risk amid what it described as the near-total collapse of human rights protections inside the country. The group noted that most Afghan refugees being expelled, including many holding official Proof of Registration cards, had lived in Pakistan for generations and had never set foot in Afghanistan.
Human Rights Watch documented a pattern of abusive tactics accompanying the roundups, describing police arresting Afghans while they shopped, attended school or sought day labour, often confiscating phones and cash and demanding bribes in exchange for release. One Afghan refugee who was forcibly returned described the desperation of the moment of her arrest. “We begged them not to deport us, but they didn’t listen,” she told Human Rights Watch, saying her family was ultimately expelled and now lives in hiding inside Afghanistan.
United Nations human rights experts have specifically flagged the heightened danger facing women, journalists, former government officials and members of Afghanistan’s former security forces, groups the Taliban has targeted for persecution since retaking power in August 2021. Reporters Without Borders has said Pakistani police forcibly returned at least nine Afghan journalists, some holding valid visas, since the start of 2026 alone.
A Refugee Population Left in Legal Limbo
Central to the crisis is the precarious legal status many long-term Afghan residents of Pakistan have held for years. Identity documents such as Proof of Registration cards and Afghan Citizen Cards have never conferred formal refugee status or permanent residency, requiring periodic renewal that Pakistani authorities have increasingly declined to process. More than 1.3 million Afghan refugees effectively became undocumented after Pakistan stopped renewing Proof of Registration cards last year, according to Refugees International, a shift that has placed close to 2 million Afghans at risk of deportation despite having built decades of life inside the country.
Aid organisations warn that without significantly expanded international support, the scale of returns risks deepening poverty and instability inside Afghanistan itself, where women and girls already face severe restrictions on education and employment under Taliban rule, further limiting many returning families’ ability to rebuild their lives. As deportations continue at a pace of hundreds of families crossing the border each day, the underlying tensions driving the crisis, security fears, economic desperation, and open conflict between Islamabad and Kabul- show few signs of easing.
