Returning from Pakistan: How are Afghan returnees coping back in their homeland?

I returned from Pakistan around a year ago. I was the only one in my family without a Proof of Registration card. I was afraid the Pakistani police would arrest and deport me to Afghanistan and that my family would remain in Pakistan. I didn’t even dare to travel to the city. Finally, I decided to return with my family to Afghanistan.

Gul Muhammad, from Balkh province, is one of five returnees from different provinces whom we interviewed about their experience, having lived for most of their lives in Pakistan, of returning to Afghanistan and how they have been managing their lives, families, finances and the schooling of their children. They were among more than 722,000 Afghans who returned to Afghanistan between 15 September 2023 and 16 September 2024, according to the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) latest count, released in mid-September 2024. Out of this number, 33,400 were deported.^[1] In this report, we speak about ‘returnees’, but, of course, many of those crossing into Afghanistan have never set foot on Afghan soil before. Born and brought up in Pakistan, the children or grandchildren of refugees, for some, this was their first time in Afghanistan.

According to UNHCR’s figures from March 2024 (see figure 1 below), there are about three million Afghans living in Pakistan; that is about a tenth of the 30 million Afghans who have ever lived as refugees there. Millions of Afghans fled east in the 1980s and 1990s to find safety during the various phases of the war in Afghanistan, the occupations and general turmoil. Most have since returned. Voluntary repatriations began as early as the late 1980s and included the mass repatriation that took place during the Islamic Republic in the early years of Hamid Karzai’s rule, incentivised by international donors and UNHCR and promoted as evidence of the success of the Islamic Republic ‘project’. However, there have also been deportations, including the mass forced returns of 2016 and 2017.^[2] Over the years, many Afghans have also re-migrated to Pakistan. The most recent large outflux was after the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) when, according to Pakistani government figures reported to UNHCR, 600,000 Afghans crossed into Pakistan in the 17 months from August 2021 to 31 January 2023.

The three million Afghans now living in Pakistan are divided into three categories, as per their registration status (see figure 1 below): holders of Proof of Registration cards (PoR), jointly issued by UNHCR and the Pakistani government since 2006;^[3] holders of Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC), issued by the Pakistani government since 2017;^[4] and undocumented Afghan refugees.^[5] What documents individuals hold – or do not hold – in Pakistan also affects the amount of support given by UN agencies if they return to Afghanistan: UNHCR only looks after the PoR card-holders, and supports any returning voluntarily, while the ACC holders and undocumented receive less substantial support by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

On 3 October 2023, Islamabad endorsed a plan to repatriate over a million foreigners, largely Afghans, who did not hold valid documents. The IEA urged Pakistan to hold off going ahead with the plan until the spring. In spite of these pleas, Islamabad gave a tight one-month deadline to the refugees to depart or it said it would forcibly deport them (see this UNHCR update and this Border Consortium update).

Almost two months later, at the end of November, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that Pakistani police and other officials were carrying out mass detentions of Afghans, seizing property and livestock and destroying identity documents in order to compel them to leave en masse. Around the same time, Islamabad decided that only those Afghans who held Pakistani visas would be allowed to enter Pakistan and that the Afghan ID card was no longer acceptable for any cross-border travellers any longer.^[6] It called this “the first phase of refugees’ deportation.”

A UNHCR and IOM Pakistan Flash Update from 24 April 2024 found that most of those who returned (half a million at that point) were undocumented Afghans (89 per cent), followed by Proof of Registration holders (9 per cent) and Afghan Citizen Card holders (2 per cent). Among the deportees (around 30,000), 94 per cent were undocumented and 6 per cent had a Proof of Registration card. The most common reason given by undocumented and ACC holders for leaving Pakistan was fear of arrest (89 percent). “Returnees were most likely to return from Quetta (19 percent) and Peshawar (17 percent),” the report said, “and were most likely to go to Nangrahar (26 per cent), Kandahar (23 per cent) and Kabul (16 per cent).”

The returns continued into 2024, reaching their peak in May and June (38,000 returns in each of those months), the UN Agency for Refugees said. Finally, on 10 July 2024, ten days after the Proof of Registration cards, held by 1.45 million Afghan refugees, had expired, the Pakistan government approved a one-year extension (see Al Jazeera reporting). This granted the cardholders a stay until 30 June 2025.

Leaving Pakistan: Fear of deportation

Like Gul Muhammad from Balkh, whose words began this report, all our other interviewees – from Laghman, Kunduz, Kandahar and Helmand – left Pakistan because they feared being deported. All had been living in Pakistan since the 1980s and all returned to Afghanistan at some point during the last year. Two were registered refugees in Pakistan, with PoR cards, and three were unregistered, although Gul Muhammad’s family had been living in Pakistan for 37 years and he was the only unregistered member of his registered family.

Our interviewee from Kandahar province, father of eight, Hashim Khan, had lived in Pakistan for 43 years. He said he had returned because he was afraid he would be forcibly deported, despite the fact that he was registered in Pakistan and had a PoR card:

I returned now because I was afraid I’d be deported. There were families who had PoRs but were, nonetheless, deported. I was afraid that my family would be deported, and we’d also lose the money which the UNHCR gave us. … I don’t trust the Pakistani government. [However] they announced several times that after the deportation of the undocumented refugees, they’d turn to documented refugees. 

He remembers the deportations of 2016/17, but said, then the Pakistani government was going only after individuals:

[At that time], they’d arrest individuals and deport them. The focus was on individuals, not entire families. There were people from our village who were arrested many times – they were jailed and then deported – but they actually had the chance to return to their families [in Pakistan] on the very same day. [For example], in 2017 a person from our village was arrested when he was travelling from a district to Quetta city. He was deported to Spin Boldak and delivered to the Afghan government, but the Pakistani police told him and other arrestees that they’d wait until they’d [the deportees] returned to Chaman and would then give them a lift back to Quetta, if they paid a bribe. I mean, the police were arresting and deporting people at different times, but it was not strict like it is now, that there wouldn’t be any way to cross the border back and the only option [once deported] is to stay in Afghanistan.

Hashim Khan was so afraid of deportation that he sold everything he had for half its value:

I had a cow which was worth 400,000 Pakistani Rupees (1,450 USD). I sold it for 200,000 Pakistani Rupees (720 USD). Everything lost its value and was worth practically nothing.

Helmandi Hashmat Khan, who has five children, had lived in Pakistan for 42 years and, like his countryman from Kandahar, had been registered in Pakistan. He said:

I came back from Pakistan last year on the brink of a harsh winter. I wasn’t deported. I willingly returned because I was hearing different kinds of rumours every other day. Sometimes they were saying that all refugees would be deported and sometimes that PoR holders would [be allowed to] stay. I was tired of hearing these rumours and, meanwhile, I was afraid of deportation.

The interviewee originally from Kunduz, who heads a household of 12, Khodaidad, had lived as an undocumented refugee in Pakistan for 38 years. He left after one of his sons was arrested by the Pakistani police:

Our family migrated to Pakistan 38 years ago because of the fighting. We returned once before to Afghanistan in 2017 and settled in Kabul. I bought a property in Kabul and built a house in Bagrami district because I didn’t have anything in Kunduz. We re-migrated to Pakistan again two months after the IEA takeover in 2021 because the economic situation didn’t look good. But last year, as the government of Pakistan turned harsher towards undocumented refugees, I packed up my belongings and told my son to rent a truck. He was arrested while searching for a rental track and kept in custody for two days and a night. I paid a bribe of 25,000 Pakistani Rupees (90 USD) to the police to get him released. As soon as he was free, we rented a truck and left Pakistan.

Laghmani Muhammed Ishaq was born in Pakistan and had lived his entire life as an unregistered refugee, making a living as a shopkeeper. He decided to return to Afghanistan with his wife and four children because his Pakistani friends and acquaintances were warning him that, this time, their government was serious about deportation.

My family migrated to Pakistan around 40 years ago. My father said that we migrated because of fighting in the country. I was born in Pakistan, but I don’t have refugee documents. Last year, I was so afraid the police would arrest me, I even didn’t dare go to my shop. I wasn’t deported, but I was sure that the police would deport me if they’d arrested me. We’ve been seeing and hearing of refugees being deported every day. I decided to return to my country. The government of Pakistan made the rules stricter many times during our presence in Pakistan in the past. But before, they only arrested people they found on the open roads between cities – they were not going after the shopkeepers or searching people’s houses. Even the Pakistani government officials that were customers in my vegetable shop, told me it is best to close the shop and leave. This is the first time I shifted my family to Afghanistan. I’d never tried before because I knew there is no job or house waiting for me and there was always the imminent risk of fighting.

Returning to Afghanistan: Where is home?

Housing and accommodation is a major problem for Afghan returnees. According to a December 2023 Save the Children survey of returnees, only a third had a place to return to,^[7] with worse figures reported by UNHCR: they found only 17 per cent of returnees had no need of accommodation in their final destination. The majority of returnees do not own a property in their place of origin. Some had lost property due to neglect and the passage of time or in the destruction of war or it had been taken by cousins and nephews and land divided between multiple members of the family.^[8] UNHCR found that, generally, those forced to return often chose not to live where they or their family were originally from because there were no job opportunities there or they did not have enough money to build a house.

Among our interviewees, just one had returned to his place of origin, two had returned to their province but not their district and two had headed elsewhere in the country. Possibly the most fortunate among the five was Khodaidad from Kunduz province, who has settled in Bagrami in Kabul province where he had bought land in 2017.He was the only one of our five interviewees who had a place to return to.

Muhammad Ishaq from Laghman province, by contrast, is now living with his wife and four children under the blue sky:

I don’t have a house to live in. A relative of ours has temporarily given me some land in the outskirts of the city. It’s walled land, but without a house. I’ve erected a tent, and we live in that tent.

He is not unusual. Nearly one in six returnee families are living in tents, according to the Save the Children survey.

Gul Muhammed from Balkh has rented a house, but said he can hardly afford to pay the rent and feed his six children:

I chose to settle in the provincial capital, Mazar-e Sharif for two reasons. First my home in our village was ruined in the fighting and I don’t have enough money to rebuild it. Second, I want my children to go to school. I’ve rented a house and pay 4,000 afghanis (55 USD) each month.

Hashim Khan, originally from Kandahar who returned from Quetta, told AAN he had neither house, nor land. He had rented a house in Daman district for 3,000 afghanis (40 USD) a month, but was struggling to pay the rent. He said he had heard the Islamic Emirate would provide housing for returnees, but “so far nobody has given me anything.”

The interviewee from Helmand, Hashmat Khan, has settled in Marja district of this province. He bought a house with the money he had and spent more than half his savings to make it home. He is among the lucky minority who brought their assets back with them. Only a third of returnees had managed to do this, the Save the Children survey found, while 31 per cent of returnees (at the Spin Boldak crossing) and 12 per cent (at Torkham) indicated that their assets had been confiscated. “Most of the families,” said the report, had faced another hurdle: “[D]ue to their livelihood status, [they] did not have the means to transport their household assets back into Afghanistan and had opted to leave them behind or dispose of them.”

Feeding a family without a job

The lack of job opportunities, together with an insufficiency of aid, are two key difficulties facing returnees. Nearly half (47 percent) of those surveyed by Save the Children said there were no jobs in Afghanistan, with 81 percent saying they did not have skills that could lead to employment.

Among our interviewees, only two have been lucky enough to find work – of a sort. Hashim Khan from Kandahar said he had managed to open a shop in a cabin (ghorfa) in the district where his family lived. However, his earnings could not meet the needs of his family:

I’ve rented a cabin for 2,500 afghanis (35 USD) and I’m selling spices there because I have experience in this. But I can’t earn enough money to feed my family. I earn 150-200 afghanis [2.5-3 USD] a day, which is hardly enough to pay the rent of the house and the cabin. We’re buying food with the money UNHCR gave us. But I still hope that my small initiative will flourish.

The returnee from Helmand province, Hashmat Khan has also managed to find a job for himself, but said it was not only dangerous but also did not earn him enough money to support his family well:

I don’t have that money to start a small business. The only skill I have is driving. I tried to find a driving job, but I couldn’t… I went to Spin Boldak to talk to the people who [illegally] traffic cars to Quetta. Sometimes, I find a car to drive it and take it to a district of Quetta. This is a very risky job because it is possible that I could be arrested and jailed or killed by the police of either country, while I try to escape from them and I still don’t make enough to feed my children. It is also hard and tiresome.

Gul Muhammad from Balkh province recalled how he lost his job in Pakistan:

I was a teacher in an NGO school in an Afghan refugees’ camp in Quetta. I was fired by the NGO because I didn’t have a PoR card. The NGO told me I should have PoR because my salary had to be transferred to the bank and for that, I had to have a bank account, and it wasn’t possible for a refugee to open a bank account without a PoR card.

He said that upon return to Afghanistan he could not find a job and that he had married off his 16-year-old daughter for her bride price:^[9]

I tried to find a job but failed to do so. In searching for work, unfortunately, I had an accident. Both my feet and one arm were broken. I can’t work now, and my life was badly affected. I’ve installed a shop in a cabin in front of my house and my 13 years old son is running it. But this shop can’t feed our family. Finally, I was compelled to marry my 16-year-old daughter off to someone. I know how bad it is to give a daughter and take the money, but what could I do? 

Khodaidad, from Kunduz, who now lives in Kabul, said three members of his household were in constant search for work, but could hardly ever find any:

Our household is badly affected economically. I had some money when returning from Pakistan and bought a rickshaw for one of my sons and thought it would earn us some money here. But it didn’t. Finally, I sold it for less than I’d bought it. My other son and I’ve been going to the square near us. Hundreds of men are waiting there for work, but there is no work for them. For the last twenty days, we’ve been going to the square but finding no job.

Khodaidad, like around 40 percent of returnees surveyed by Save the Children, had to borrow food or rely on friends and relatives. He said he had no other option but to take a loan from relatives in Pakistan:

We can hardly earn 200 afghanis (3 USD) a day, but we spend more than three times that, 600 afghanis (6 USD), every day. So far, I’m indebted to the tune of 100,000 afghanis (1,400 USD) to my relatives living in Pakistan. Each month, I ask them to send me a loan because I don’t have food for my family members to feed them.

The returnee from Laghman province, Muhammad Ishaq, is desperate because he is jobless and has to rely on his family:

There are no jobs at all. Sometimes my relatives help me and buy some flour and other food for me. My heart is bursting now. I don’t know what to do.

Unemployment and economic distress in Afghanistan have, on many occasions, compelled people, especially young men, to attempt to cross to Iran and Pakistan and take any odd job that might earn them a passage to Turkey, where they do the same until they might earn enough to pay to cross into Europe. This is why they often readily accept hard, even life-threatening jobs. The current conditions in Afghanistan might trigger some returnees to think about trying to make the perilous journey to Europe, either themselves or young men in the family, although typically money, in some form is needed^[10] (for more, see this 2022 AAN report ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: No good options for Afghans travelling to and from Turkey’).

A joint initiative of the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the Asia Displacement Solution Platform (ADSP), which works to contribute to the development of comprehensive solutions for displaced populations across Asia, said in its May 2024 report:

Afghans are once again facing return to a context where conditions for sustainable reintegration are not met. Rights organisations have documented prior attempts to return Afghans, while research has shown that, if the causes of the initial departure remain unaddressed, returnees will probably leave again.

Deprived of education

While they were in Pakistan, Save the Children said, more than two-thirds of child returnees in the families surveyed had been going to school. That ratio is now reversed. Almost two-thirds (65 per cent) are now not going to school.^[11] The majority (85 per cent) told Save the Children they did not have the necessary documents to register and enrol their children in Afghan schools. All our interviewees were also concerned that their children were being deprived of education, but blamed not lack of documents, but lack of schools. The sons of the interviewees in Balkh and Laghman were going to school, although their older daughters could not, while the returnees now in Kabul and Kandahar said there were not even nearby schools for their sons and younger girls. Hashmat Khan from Helmand also faced difficulties getting his only child of school age to school, but had managed to invest in transportation:

One of my sons was going to school in Pakistan. None of the others had reached school age. My son goes to school now as well. The school is around two kilometres away from my house. I bought a bicycle for him and he cycles to school every day. 

Hashim Khan from Kandahar said that out of his eight children,

… four were going to school in Pakistan. My two elder daughters were in class eight and a son and one daughter were reading in class two. None of them go to school now because there’s no school in the village where I live. Even if there had been a school there or a high school for girls in the district centre, my older daughters couldn’t go because there’s a ban on girls’ schooling above class six.

Khodaidad, from Kunduz province, currently living in a village in Kabul, province had a similar story:

All my children – three sons and two daughters – were going to school in Pakistan. Two boys were in class four and one in class six and both my daughters were in class three. None of them go to school now because there aren’t any schools near our house. It’s a one-and-a-half-hour walk to reach the nearest school. We’d need to rent at least a rickshaw for them, if not a car. But we can’t afford either. We’re very unhappy to see them deprived of their education. 

Gul Muhammad from Balkh province said he had chosen to settle in Mazar-e Sharif so that he could send his children to school, but the ban on girls’ schooling had dictated a different reality:

I didn’t return to my village, I chose to live in Mazar-e Sharif, instead. I thought my children would go to school. My eldest daughter had graduated from grade six in Pakistan and my sons and small daughters were in lower grades. My eldest daughter can’t continue [her education] because the IEA has banned girls [going to school] beyond grade six.

A morsel of aid 

Upon arrival in Afghanistan, not all returnees are treated equally. Those with PoR cards who opted to return voluntarily receive a package of assistance from UNHCR. They are given one-off cash assistance of 375 USD per individual “to cover transportation and other immediate needs upon arrival” and each family should be granted 700 USD three months after arriving in their place of origin (see information about UNHCR’s care package here). Since 15 September 2023, some 109,700 individuals returning from Pakistan have been provided with cash assistance in Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad encashment centres, including over 69,500 PoR cardholders, the UNHCR reported in its 16 September 2024 update. However, undocumented returnees and ACC cardholders receive no assistance from UNHCR. They get more limited help, packages of food and non-food items, from IOM.

The Border Consortium, a collaborative initiative comprised of various humanitarian organizations aimed at addressing the needs of returnees and vulnerable populations in Afghanistan, particularly those returning from Pakistan, reported on 23 September 2024 that about 85 per cent of 553,4000 returnees had been assisted between 15 September 2023 and 30 June 2024 by different agencies. The Border Consortium report said that each returnee family received from the IEA government upon arrival a cash grant of 4,000 afghanis (60 USD) for families of two and up to 10,000 afghanis (140 USD) for families of five or larger and a sim card.^[12]

Two of our interviewees, from Helmand and Kandahar and an interviewee from Balkh, who is an unregistered member of registered family, said they had received help from UNHCR on arrival into Afghanistan, but not yet the second amount of 700 USD which had been due in their area of origin after three months. For example, Kandahari Hashim Khan said:

A day after our arrival from Pakistan, I was provided with more than 2,600 USD by UNHCR [for his family of ten]. The IEA also granted me 10,000 afghanis (140 USD) and two free mobile SIM cards. I spent only one night in the waiting area, in a camp located in Takhta Pul district of Kandahar. After that, I came to Daman district of  the province.

Our two other interviewees who were unregistered in Pakistan were assisted by IOM with food and non-food items when they arrived in Afghanistan and also said that, since then, they had received no aid. The returnee from Kunduz, who now lives in Kabul, said:

When our household arrived in Torkham, we were provided by the IEA with 30,000 afghanis (430 USD) for the whole household. As my two sons are married, they calculated us as three families, so they gave 10,000 afghanis (140 USD) to each family. They also gave us three cards, one for each family and told us that, with these cards, we’d receive food items for the first six months. After arriving in Kabul, we went to the Department of Refugees in Kabul and registered ourselves. But since then, we haven’t received any of the promised food items.

Muhammad Ishaq, the returnee from Laghman province, said that when he arrived in Nangrahar, the IEA gave him 20,000 afghanis (300 USD):

I was also provided with a food card, and told I’d receive rations for six months. They told me to keep the card on me. So far, I haven’t received anything, and the card has expired.

Afghan returnees from Pakistan, without question, are in a precarious situation, especially  given that the whole country is struggling both with what the World Bank has called a “persistently stagnant” economy  (AAN analysis here) and declining humanitarian aid. The Bank reported that the economy contracted by a quarter after the re-establishment of the Emirate. Meanwhile, the Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for 2024 has received only a quarter of the required 3.06 billion USD in funding, while the United Nations Strategic Framework for Afghanistan, 2023–2025, had, by August 2024 received only a third of the 2.9 billion USD required to meet the basic human needs of people in Afghanistan for 2024 (see the UN Security Council latest regular quarterly report on situation in Afghanistan, released on 9 September 2024).

Tough prospects

Being forced to uproot themselves, with little or no time to prepare, mostly unable to bring assets with them and not having a home or job to come back to – this is the uncertain and undesirable nature of ‘return’ for most Afghans arriving from Pakistan. Adding to this unappealing proposition is the difficulty of getting an education for their children, who are generally used to going to school; the boys and younger girls may get to school if there is one nearby, but older girls are now forced to sit at home. It comes as no surprise then that some returnees like Hashmat Khan from Helmand are venturing into illegal activities, such as vehicle smuggling, to try to scrape together a living. Most, however, still hope for some kind of help or financial aid that will help get them through this tough time.

The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, recently expressed his concern about “the challenges in scaling up capacities to absorb returnees and enable their sustainable reintegration,” a reason why, he said, “it is essential that the humanitarian appeal be funded sufficiently to help to address the immense needs of the Afghan people, particularly the most vulnerable.” The amount of humanitarian aid coming to Afghanistan, however, is in decline, while needs, are not.

Edited by Kate Clark and Rachel Reid