RASC News Agency: The government of Pakistan has intensified its rhetoric against Afghanistani migrants, branding them a source of insecurity and economic strain while ordering their immediate expulsion. This latest move underscores a growing regional campaign of scapegoating displaced Afghanistani populations, while ignoring the deeper cause of displacement: the Taliban’s authoritarian rule that has gutted Afghanistan’s economy, stripped away basic freedoms, and left millions with no choice but exile.
Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, speaking in a recent interview with domestic media, claimed that Afghanistani migrants “constitute both a financial burden and a grave security threat.” He alleged that “terrorism is being orchestrated from Afghan soil against Pakistan,” accusing migrant communities of fueling unrest. Asif maintained that Islamabad has repeatedly called on the Taliban to curtail militant groups operating freely across the border, but that the regime has failed to take meaningful steps.
The defense minister insisted Pakistan can “no longer shoulder the heavy cost” of migrant presence and framed deportation as the only feasible solution. His assertion, however, glosses over the reality that millions of Afghanistani families have lived in Pakistan for decades many with no home, employment, or even safety to return to under Taliban rule. For them, deportation is not repatriation but forced delivery into a landscape of repression, poverty, and fear.
International humanitarian organizations have raised alarm that mass expulsions could unleash a humanitarian catastrophe inside Afghanistan. The Taliban’s repressive rule has already suffocated civil liberties, erased women from public life, and intensified hunger and economic collapse. For Afghanistani women and girls, the return is particularly devastating: while host countries like Pakistan and Iran deny them access to affordable education and employment, in Afghanistan the Taliban enforces an outright ban on secondary schooling, higher education, and nearly all forms of work.
The timing of Pakistan’s policy echoes Iran’s parallel crackdown. Tehran announced this week that it will launch a second wave of mass arrests and deportations of Afghanistani migrants, with Tehran’s governor confirming that security forces across every province have been ordered to pursue expulsion with renewed aggression. Both governments appear determined to purge their territories of Afghanistani refugees, regardless of the humanitarian costs.
This dual assault leaves millions of Afghanistani migrants caught in a tightening vice. Hounded in their host countries and barred from safe return, they exist in a state of perpetual limbo stateless, rightless, and silenced. In cities from Karachi to Mashhad, families recount being evicted overnight, extorted by corrupt officials, and forced to watch their children denied schooling. Yet crossing back into Afghanistan only condemns them to a society ruled by the Taliban, where ethnic minorities are dispossessed of their lands, dissent is crushed, and the most basic rights are extinguished.
By painting Afghanistani migrants as scapegoats for economic woes and security challenges, Pakistan and Iran shift blame outward while overlooking the regime at the heart of the crisis: the Taliban. It is their draconian rule that drives the endless tide of displacement, and their refusal to govern responsibly that leaves Afghanistani citizens in a state of desperation. Until that reality is confronted, migrants will continue to pay the price trapped between hostile borders abroad and tyranny at home.
