RASC News Agency: In an unprecedented and deeply alarming move, Pakistani authorities have forcibly deported 40 Afghanistani refugees who had already been granted formal resettlement approval by the German government, returning them to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. This action has sparked a wave of condemnation from international human rights organizations, legal advocates, and refugee protection networks, who warn that the deportees now face imminent and potentially fatal danger. According to the German daily Tagesspiegel, these deportees were part of a group of approximately 2,300 Afghanistani nationals approved under Germany’s Federal Admission Programme. For months, they had been stranded in Islamabad, awaiting scheduled flights to safety. Yet Pakistan’s recent escalation of mass expulsions has now thrown their lives into chaos and uncertainty.
The German humanitarian organization Kabul Luftbrücke confirmed this was the first time that individuals with full German federal clearance were forcibly removed from Pakistan. In previous cases, the German Embassy in Islamabad had intervened to halt deportations. This time, however, no diplomatic lifeline was extended, and Berlin has not explained its silence. Eyewitness accounts from within the Afghanistani refugee community in Islamabad indicate that 17 families close to 90 individuals holding German resettlement approvals were detained. They were subjected to biometric registration and transferred to Haji Camp, a holding facility notorious among refugees as the last stop before being escorted back across the border into Afghanistan.
Eva Bayer, a senior member of Kabul Luftbrucke, condemned the deportations in stark terms: “The German government has abandoned its Afghanistani partners. Among those deported are people who know beyond doubt that if they return to Afghanistan under Taliban rule, they will not survive.” This incident is part of a broader crisis: hundreds of Afghanistani human rights defenders, journalists, women leaders, and former employees of German institutions all of whom have received formal asylum or relocation approvals remain trapped in Pakistan under conditions of increasing police harassment, arbitrary detention, and the looming threat of deportation.
Earlier this year, Germany’s new government reaffirmed a pledge to relocate 2,500 Afghanistani refugees from Pakistan. Yet, following a controversial policy shift by the German chancellor to suspend parts of the intake programme, particularly for Afghanistani nationals, the process has slowed to a crawl. This suspension has drawn fierce criticism from human rights bodies and advocacy groups, including Amnesty International, who argue that it represents a flagrant breach of international refugee law and the 1951 Geneva Convention.
The deportation of these 40 Afghanistani refugees is not merely a bureaucratic failure it is a death sentence for some, a life of persecution for others, and a blatant dereliction of moral and legal responsibility by the international community. Returning civilians to a regime that has institutionalized public floggings, systemic gender apartheid, ethnic discrimination, and the suppression of all basic freedoms is tantamount to complicity in their persecution. For many observers, this case is a chilling signal: the international refugee protection framework is eroding, and the political will to safeguard those fleeing tyranny is buckling under geopolitical convenience. If such deportations continue, history will record that nations capable of saving lives chose, instead, to deliver the vulnerable back into the hands of one of the most brutal regimes of the 21st century.
