Shafaqna English– Over 100,000 Afghans have left Pakistan in April, the interior ministry said Tuesday (22 Apr 2025).
The Pakistan government launched its mass eviction campaign on April 1. The interior ministry told AFP that “100,529 Afghans have left in April.” Convoys of Afghan families have been heading to the border since the start of April, when the deadline to leave expired, crossing into a country mired in a humanitarian crisis.
“I was born in Pakistan and have never been to Afghanistan,” 27-year-old Allah Rahman told AFP at the Torkham border on Saturday.
“I was afraid the police might humiliate me and my family. Now we’re heading back to Afghanistan out of sheer helplessness.” Many people are leaving voluntarily, choosing to depart instead of facing deportation, but the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR said that in April alone, more arrests and detentions took place in Pakistan — 12,948 — than in all of last year.
Millions of Afghans have poured into Pakistan over the past several decades, fleeing successive wars, as well as hundreds of thousands since the return of the Taliban government in 2021.