RASC News Agency: In one of the largest forced repatriations in recent memory, Pakistan expelled more than 14,500 Afghanistani migrants in a single day, further deepening the humanitarian crisis along the volatile border regions. The Taliban’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation confirmed on Thursday, November 6, that thousands of returnees crossed back into Afghanistan through the Spin Boldak, Torkham, and Bahramcha border points.
Simultaneously, at least 323 Afghanistani asylum seekers were deported from Iran via Islam Qala and Pul-e Abrisham border crossings, underscoring a rapidly deteriorating regional environment for displaced Afghanistani nationals.
Humanitarian agencies report that Pakistan’s mass deportation campaign has accelerated to an unprecedented pace, with authorities in Islamabad demolishing refugee settlements and imposing harsh curfews on families who have lived on Pakistani soil for decades. The expulsions have created a chaotic humanitarian scene at the borders sprawling tent camps filled with the elderly, women, and children facing starvation, disease, and freezing temperatures.
In Kandahar Province, the Taliban’s refugee department confirmed the deaths of two infants a six-month-old boy and a six-month-old girl in the Anzargi returnee camp in Takhta Pul district. According to local sources, both children succumbed to hypothermia after enduring freezing conditions in Pakistan’s Chaman region, only to perish shortly after crossing into Afghanistan.
The Taliban administration attributed the tragedy to “severe weather and lack of heating materials.” However, observers say the regime has made no tangible effort to provide emergency aid or proper facilities for the thousands of families stranded in barren camps. The returnees, many of whom were forced to abandon their belongings, now face acute shortages of food, medical care, and clean water.
Previous reports have already documented the deaths of a woman and three children from hunger and untreated illness in other returnee camps. Aid workers describe scenes of desperation families burning plastic and scraps of wood to stay warm as infants cry in hunger.
Local officials have warned that without immediate international humanitarian assistance, the death toll could surge dramatically in the coming weeks. Yet the Taliban, instead of mobilizing relief operations, have largely resorted to issuing statements and deflecting responsibility, blaming neighboring countries while continuing to suppress domestic aid organizations.
Humanitarian experts argue that the crisis exposes the fundamental incapacity and indifference of the Taliban regime. Despite claiming to govern effectively, the group has failed to create any infrastructure to absorb returnees or sustain basic welfare systems. The vast majority of repatriated families have been abandoned in temporary camps, where living conditions resemble open-air prisons.
“The Taliban speak of sovereignty and order, yet they cannot even provide blankets for freezing children,” said one humanitarian worker on condition of anonymity. “What we are witnessing is a state without compassion a regime more concerned with control than with saving lives.”
Pakistan has justified the deportations as a “national security measure,” alleging that Afghanistani nationals have been involved in cross-border militancy a claim the Taliban dismiss as baseless. Nevertheless, relations between the two governments have sharply deteriorated amid mutual accusations of harboring extremist networks.
Analysts say the Taliban’s diplomatic isolation and inability to engage constructively with neighbors have exacerbated the suffering of ordinary Afghanistanis, leaving them vulnerable to political reprisals and collective punishment. While Islamabad seeks to assert security dominance, Kabul’s rulers appear powerless and unprepared, incapable of negotiating humanitarian protections or international coordination.
What was once a fragile refugee lifeline has now collapsed into a humanitarian catastrophe. International aid agencies warn that Afghanistan is on the brink of an even greater crisis, as tens of thousands of returnees continue to pour into a country already crippled by economic collapse and widespread poverty.
Yet the Taliban’s priorities remain focused on consolidating power, policing morality, and silencing dissent while the displaced and destitute bear the full weight of their failures.
For many returnees, there is no home to return to, no work to find, and no government to rely on. Afghanistan today stands as a tragic mirror of its rulers: insular, indifferent, and devoid of human empathy a land where children freeze in tents while their leaders issue hollow promises from the comfort of Kabul.
