Afghans Deported From Pakistan Struggle To Find Schools, Jobs, And Shelter
2025-04-29T08:34:25Z
Dildar Khan says he’s spent his entire life in Pakistan but has now been sent “home” to Afghanistan under a scheme that has seen some 100,000 people deported in recent weeks.
Afghans Deported From Pakistan Struggle To Find Schools, Jobs, And Shelter
By Firuza Azizi and Ray Furlong April 29, 2025
Dildar Khan says he’s spent his entire life in Pakistan but has now been sent “home” to Afghanistan under a scheme that has seen some 100,000 people deported in recent weeks.
Khan has five children between the ages of 2 and 13. “There are two girls and three boys. They were going to school,” he told RFE/RL in a phone interview.
But Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have canceled secondary education for girls since they retook power in 2021.
“It is difficult, very difficult. Because it is important that they are educated,” added Khan.
The Pakistani authorities announced a mass deportation campaign in March, accusing Afghans of links to drug smuggling and terrorism.
Other deported Afghans who spoke to RFE/RL also voiced concern about the impact it would have on their children.
“Our children are sad they cannot go to school,” said Khan Zaman after being forcibly returned to Kabul from Peshawar in northwest Pakistan.
The Save the Children organization said some 50,000 minors were among those deported in the first two weeks of April alone. The charity’s country director, Arshad Malik, said “many of these children were born in Pakistan — Afghanistan is not the country they call home.”
Scarce Jobs In Afghanistan
In a report on April 18, the group noted that many deported families also faced problems finding food, shelter, and work.
Dildar Khan worked as a taxi driver in Pakistan but is now unemployed. He and his family are sheltering in a single room in his brother’s house in a mountainous area of the Achin district of Nangarhar Province.
“There is no space. We are living like this. There are no jobs,” said Khan.
The family was deported on April 20. At the border, they received some $140 from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) but Khan said they had now run out of money.
Their possessions are stacked outside his brother’s house, exposed to the sun and rain. “Our request is that [someone] can find us work so we can make a life,” he said.
Imran, a resident of Nangarhar who has six children, told RFE/RL a similar story of a life destroyed by deportation from Pakistan.
“We used to work there, our lives were going well, our children went to schools, madrasahs. Our expenses were covered,” he said.
“But when we came here, there are no jobs, we cannot meet our expenses, we are facing a difficult life.”
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) stated on April 28 that it was “working around the clock to provide emergency assistance.”
But, it added, “the needs are rapidly increasing and more resources are urgently needed.”
The exodus from Pakistan has mostly passed through the Torkham border crossing, which has seen long lines of trucks heading northwest along the highway to Jalalabad.
“We have no place to stay in Afghanistan,” truck driver Ahmad Nabi told RFE/RL. “I wonder how this situation could impact me…. I don’t know.”
The Pakistani authorities have set varying deadlines for people to leave, depending on their residency status. More than 800,000 Afghans were estimated to be living in Pakistan without papers after fleeing the Taliban takeover in 2021.
But another 1.4 million have papers issued by the UNHCR, and many have been living in Pakistan for decades.
According to UN figures, some 800,000 Afghans were forcibly expelled prior to this new deportation drive, starting in 2023.
The Taliban authorities have criticized the deportations while also saying they are preparing sites to house deportees. But one site near Torkham visited by AFP recently “consisted of nothing more than cleared roads on a rocky plain.”
RFE/RL has been unable to operate freely in Afghanistan since the Taliban regained power in the country.
Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-pakistan- deportations-deadline-taliban/33398912.html
Copyright (c) 2025. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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