RASC News Agency: As the humanitarian crisis engulfing Afghanistani migrants forcibly expelled to their homeland reaches a critical tipping point, the Taliban’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations has reported that approximately 1.8 million Afghanistani migrants were deported from Iran over the past three months alone. In a statement issued on Wednesday, July 30, the ministry also claimed that over 184,000 returnees arrived from Pakistan and an additional 5,000 from Turkey since the beginning of this calendar year. The Taliban further asserted that nearly 10,000 Afghanistani detainees have been released from prisons in Iran and Pakistan and repatriated, a figure that experts caution may be inflated and used for political propaganda. While the scale of forced repatriation is staggering, the Taliban’s failure to provide even the most basic humanitarian assistance and protection to these returnees has exacerbated an already dire crisis.
Human rights organizations and United Nations reports reveal that, rather than facilitating humane treatment and safe reintegration, the Taliban systematically detain, intimidate, and even imprison segments of returnees at border crossings. Credible eyewitness accounts and investigative findings indicate that Taliban forces operating along Afghanistan’s western and southern borders employ biometric technologies to identify migrants who previously served in the ousted government’s security apparatus, journalists, or vocal critics on social media. Many of these individuals are reportedly subjected to arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearances, and in some cases, extrajudicial killings after being transferred to their home provinces. Confirmed reports from Nangarhar, Herat, Farah, Baghlan, Balkh, Badakhshan, and Takhar provinces document these grave abuses. While Taliban officials in Kabul occasionally acknowledge such incidents, they dismiss them as isolated acts driven by personal vendettas, denying any official policy or systemic pattern.
The mass forced return of hundreds of thousands of Afghanistani men, women, and children to a country wracked by rampant poverty, unemployment, insecurity, and the collapse of social services particularly in health and education has placed unprecedented strain on the nation’s fragile social infrastructure. Countless families find themselves repatriated without access to shelter, security guarantees, or any form of governmental support. International humanitarian agencies and diplomatic missions have repeatedly called on the Taliban regime to uphold international standards protecting refugees and returnees. Yet, there is no evidence of substantive progress; instead, the regime continues to neglect its responsibilities, effectively weaponizing the migration crisis as a political tool to consolidate power while the Afghanistani populace suffers.
The Taliban’s refusal to provide safety, dignity, or support to millions of returnees further exposes the regime’s illegitimacy and deepens Afghanistan’s isolation from the international community. This brutal mismanagement not only worsens the humanitarian emergency but also sows seeds of instability and social fragmentation, threatening the country’s already precarious future.
