Six million Afghans forced home face Taliban rule with nothing

At the Torkham crossing—known locally as Zero Point—the boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan dissolves into a landscape of tarpaulin shelters and plastic sheeting. This is where one life ends and another, far more uncertain, begins. Nazia, thirty-five years old, stepped across the border in August with two of her children, having spent her entire life in Pakistan despite being born Afghan. She had never set foot in Afghanistan before. "It feels good to be in my own country," she said moments after crossing, then paused. "But I've never been to Afghanistan before and many people here don't even have enough bread to eat." Her eight sisters and their children had all been deported to Afghanistan that same year—part of a movement of people so vast it has no recent parallel.

By August 2026, one million Afghans had been forced to return from Pakistan and Iran in a single year. Over the previous three years, the total had reached six million—a population equivalent to a small nation. The UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, called it unprecedented in modern history. Charlie Goodlake, the agency's spokesperson in Afghanistan, stood in the heat near the border and observed that "in a little under three years, we've seen six million people come back to Afghanistan. We've never seen in recent history a return movement on this scale." The deportations were not slowing. Pakistan and Iran, both overwhelmed by the presence of undocumented migrants, had begun sweeping expulsions. But the crackdown extended far beyond those without papers. The UN and human rights organizations documented that registered Afghan refugees—those with official Proof of Registration cards—were also being forced out. Pakistan itself had publicly acknowledged that even cardholders were no longer exempt.

Sarwar arrived at the border a few days before Nazia, traveling in a convoy of forty people packed into a Pakistani truck with everything they owned. He had left Afghanistan forty-five years earlier during the Soviet invasion. Most of his brothers were born in Pakistan. "We spent a long time there, so of course I felt heartbroken when they forced us out of our home," he said. Yet he also spoke of relief: "Despite all that pain, I am also happy because I am finally free of harassment by Pakistan's police." Every family interviewed at the crossing reported the same experience—systematic prejudice and harassment by authorities. Pakistan's government did not respond to questions about these accounts, though a foreign ministry spokesman stated that the government undertook "necessary measures to prevent any instance of harassment or maltreatment" and that any incidents were "sporadic." The expulsions had intensified after fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan escalated in October 2025. By February 2026, Human Rights Watch documented "door-to-door raids, late-night home searches and arrests without warrants." In Iran, which had hosted more than four million undocumented Afghans, mass deportations accelerated after a twelve-day conflict with Israel and the United States in June 2025. The Centre for Human Rights in Iran accused authorities of using the post-war climate to cast suspicion on Afghan migrants, branding them as potential spies for Israel.

Those returning faced a country in collapse. The UN estimated that 21.9 million Afghans—nearly half the population—needed humanitarian assistance to survive. UNICEF reported that one million children faced life-threatening malnutrition. Afghanistan remained under international sanctions tied to terrorism and human rights concerns, and foreign aid had been slashed globally. Pakistan announced on Sunday that it had granted temporary exemptions from deportation to sixteen thousand vulnerable Afghans on humanitarian grounds, a decision the UN welcomed. But sources estimated that as many as 250,000 Afghans in Pakistan faced serious harm if returned, including women and girls who would be denied education under Taliban rule.

The restrictions on women and girls had become a defining feature of Taliban governance. Zarina, Sarwar's sister-in-law, sat in a transit tent where the temperature reached 41 degrees Celsius, surrounded by anxious women and children. When asked if she worried about the future for girls in a country where the Taliban had barred women from secondary school and university, she gestured at the children around her: "Look at them, they're all girls. Of course I'm worried." A former Afghan security guard, deported first from Iran and then Pakistan, lived in hiding far from the border. "I don't leave this house," he said nervously. "We are all living in fear including my wife and children who are also afraid to go outside." He dismissed the Taliban's amnesty, announced after their return to power, which promised that former government officials and security personnel would not face retaliation. "I have no trust in their amnesty because many of my colleagues have been killed," he said. His case had been registered with the UN, but he was deported before transfer to a safer country could be arranged.

At the Taliban's foreign ministry compound in Kabul, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi acknowledged the scale of the crisis. "There's no doubt that we need some help," he said. "There is pressure due to their return but in the long run, it will benefit them as well as Afghanistan." He framed the restrictions on women's education as an internal matter for Afghans to resolve. The international isolation was evident: only Russia had formally recognized Taliban rule after five years. Yet Muttaqi pointed to deepening ties with China, India, and Central Asian states. When asked about the absence of Western recognition, he responded with a question of his own: "Those who didn't have relationships with us over the past five years, what have they achieved? Nothing."

Every family at Zero Point used that same word—nothing—but with a different weight. They were beginning the hardest of homecomings, starting over with almost nothing. Zarina had no resources to start a business or earn a living. She did not even own a tent. The transit shelters provided by the UN and aid agencies offered only a few nights of refuge before the newly returned had to find their own way forward in a country they had fled, or never known, facing a government they feared and a humanitarian catastrophe that was deepening by the month.