Refugees Paying Heavy Toll For Afghan Taliban, Pakistan Tensions

RFE
27 Nov 2025, 13:50 GMT+10

Salman is deeply disturbed as he awaits his fate inside a detention center in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.

The 22-year-old is being forced to return to Afghanistan, the country of his parents.

But he has never seen the mountainous South Asian nation, which is now emerging from more than four decades of war. He was born and raised in Pakistan, but authorities in the country are now forcing him to return to a country he has never seen.

"I have lived in Pakistan all this time, but it's given me nothing," he told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal.

Earlier this month, police in Lahore arrested him during a random search and locked him up.

"I was not provided food during those two nights," he said of the conditions during his police detention, where he was kept in a dark room.

He was then moved to a squalid detention center from where he will be forced into Afghanistan, some 600 kilometers away.

Salman is among the tens of thousands of Afghans involuntarily returned to their country every week as Pakistan goes ahead with plans to repatriate all Afghan refugees and migrants back into Afghanistan.

Senior Pakistani officials have blamed Afghans for participating in attacks on Pakistani security forces.

Islamabad has repeatedly demanded that the Taliban government in Afghanistan cease support for the Tehrike Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a rebel group fighting in northwestern Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan.

A cease-fire between the two is now under tremendous strain.

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