The Government of Pakistan has drafted a three-stage repatriation plan for Afghan refugees calling on foreign missions to coordinate the relocation of Afghan nationals out of Islamabad and Rawalpindi by March 31, 2025. The government, after US President Donald Trump's order to suspend the refugee programme, is now working to move registered Afghan refugees out of these cities and repatriate them back to their own countries. The draft also mentions the possibility of deportation of Afghans holding an Afghan Citizen Card, another form of registration for Afghan refugees in Pakistan issued almost a decade ago.
According to the UNHCR, more than three million Afghan refugees, including registered refugees and more than 800,000 undocumented people, are living in Pakistan. The Taliban’s return to power in 2021 following the United States’ muddled withdrawal sparked another wave of some 600,000 refugees into Pakistan.
The story of Afghan migration is a continuous one. The Afghans have migrated to Pakistan over decades of war and skirmish during the Soviet invasion, the subsequent civil war, and the United States-led occupation. Interestingly, Pakistan has not signed the International Refugee Convention of 1951. Yet, the country has provided shelter to these persecuted people.
For a considerable portion of the Afghan arrivals, post-Taliban 2.0 capture of Kabul, are women and girls who fled targeted terrorisations and a general stripping away of their rights in Afghanistan. The unregistered Afghans, incapable of getting legal status in Pakistan but also unable to safely return to Afghanistan, present a mounting but officially unrecognised dimension of the Afghan refugee crisis in the country. Sufficient reporting has suggested that the Taliban regime is hounding ethnic and religious minorities, targeting human rights activists, members of the Afghan army, former government officials, women rights activists, etc. There is no hiding the fact that the Taliban continues to issue more and more draconian restrictions on women’s participation in public life. The latest order issued in December 2024, banning the construction of windows in residential buildings that overlook areas used by Afghan women and saying that existing ones should be blocked.
Most Afghan refugees reside in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (54%) and Balochistan (24%), both of which border Afghanistan. On October 3, 2023, Pakistan’s national Apex Committee endorsed a plan to repatriate over a million foreigners without valid documents, largely Afghans. Afghan refugee arrivals in Pakistan have been categorised by the Pakistani government into the following three groups: 1) Temporary migrants (those residing in border towns, with extended families, or camps); 2) Transit refugees (those who arrived based on the reasons of being settled in other countries); and Resident Card Holders. Returnees from Pakistan principally return to Afghanistan via the Spin Boldak border in Kandahar province and the Torkham border in Nangarhar province.
At the governmental level, the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan has become unreceptive, primarily due to the terrorists being supported by the Taliban, causing harm to civilians, and security forces on the Pakistan side of the Durand Line
Since the implementation of the Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan (IFRP), around 750,000 people returned to Afghanistan from September 2023 to October 2024, with approximately 258,000 people returning in 2024, most of whom were undocumented. Since 2023, UNHCR has also facilitated the return of around 48,000 refugees through voluntary repatriation centres. However, the rate of detention, deportation, and returns decreased considerably between January and June 2024. Registered Afghan refugees gained some degree of stability in mid-2024 when the Government of Pakistan extended proof of registration cards for one year until 30 June 2025.
Development projects under the Refugee Affected and Hosting Areas Programme, which previously provided essential services such as shelter, food, sanitation, education, and healthcare, were halted in 2024 due to a lack of funding. Beyond the humanitarian crisis, Pakistan's security apparatus faces the challenge of the porous nature of its borders. The country's turbulent relationship with Afghanistan, coupled with cross-border security concerns, has only fueled anxieties over the unchecked movement of individuals. The presence of undocumented refugees raises fears of infiltration by hostile elements, thereby complicating internal security dynamics.
Moreover, the ongoing move of the Pakistani government is linked to ongoing tensions between Islamabad and the Taliban government in Kabul, particularly over the presence of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) inside Afghanistan. Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Taliban of harboring TTP militants, a charge the Afghan authorities deny. It is a known fact that the Afghan Taliban-TTP ties have been forged in decades of war both inside Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan. The leaders of the leaders TTP have taken an oath of allegiance to the Taliban’s ameer and often state that this group is part of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Within Pakistan, terrorism continued to remain a threatening task for law enforcement agencies. According to data obtained from the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) for 2024, the majority of terrorist attacks were carried out in the southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat, Lucky Marwat, Tank, North Waziristan, South Waziristan, Peshawar, Khyber, and Bajaur. Out of all the incidents, 355 incidents involved firing and target killing by terrorists, 113 involved the use of improvised explosive devices (IED) against security forces, political figures, officials, police, and other government institutions whereas six others were suicide attacks. These attacks claimed the lives of 275 people.
Additionally, sporadic criminal activities of militants are also causing havoc inside Pakistan. For instance, in this very month, militants slit the throats of two traders from Tirah Valley in Khyber district and left their bodies in a hilly area. The beheaded bodies of the president of the trader organisation, Haji Sher Mohammad, and another trader, Ibrar, were spotted by residents on the Hodal Sar hilltop in the Bhutan Shareef area.[11] Also, in many of the Afghan bordering districts, TTP militants force the locals to feed them. Soon after, the militants extort businessmen and wealthy landowners. Unfortunately, they have been destroying schools for girls in the North Waziristan district.
Ominously, the latest report of the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, issued on February 13, 2025, pointed out that TTP and Jamaat Ansarullah (JA) have established training camps inside Afghanistan with support from Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the provinces of Nangarhar, Khost, Takhar, Kunar, and Paktika. The report notes that the “ambition and scale of its [the TTP] attacks on Pakistan […] had significantly increased, with over 600 attacks during the reporting period, including from Afghan territory.” In the meantime, “the Taliban continued to provide TTP with logistical and operational space and financial support,” and its ameer, Noor Wali Masoud, is receiving “a monthly payment” of approximately USD 43,000. According to some estimates, there are between 6000 to 8000 terrorists of TTP operating from Afghanistan.
Overall, the internal security situation of the country and the external or rather regional dynamics are working against the establishment of peace and security. The economic burden of Afghan refugees coupled with a looming threat and suspicion is constantly fueling within Pakistan. Regrettably, at the governmental level, the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan has become unreceptive, primarily due to the terrorists being supported by the Taliban, causing harm to civilians, and security forces on the Pakistan side of the Durand Line. The larger issue of sustenance of radical and militant ideology is both sides of the border, will call for some stringent military action and the repetition of history as happened in the last decade.