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Afghans in Pakistan

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In 1979, the Pakistani government established a number of refugee camps for the Afghans after the start of the Soviet–Afghan War. By the end of 2001, there were over four million Afghan nationals in Pakistan. While some have returned to Afghanistan many decided to stay in Pakistan. It was reported in 2023 that between 3.7 and 4.4 million Afghan nationals were in Pakistan. Of these, some had special residence permits while others had no documents. On 3 October 2023, Pakistan ordered that all undocumented foreigners must leave Pakistan within a month or face deportation. Large number of them left Pakistan and settled in Afghanistan. As of June 2026, little over 1.7 million Afghan citizens remain in Pakistan according to the UNHCR.

History and migration

Afghans have been migrating back and forth between Afghanistan and Hindustan since at least the times of the Ghaznavids in the 10th century. The Durrani Empire was ruled by a succession of Afghan monarchs with their capitals in Kandahar, Kabul, and Peshawar. In his 1857 review of John William Kaye's The Afghan War, Friedrich Engels described Afghanistan as:

... an extensive country of Asia ... between Persia and the Indies, and in the other direction between the Hindu Kush and the Indian Ocean. It formerly included the Persian provinces of Khorassan and Kohistan, together with Herat, Beluchistan, Cashmere, and Sinde, and a considerable part of the Punjab ... Its principal cities are Kabul, the capital, Ghuznee, Peshawer, and Kandahar.

Interaction and migration by the region's native people were common. After the Second Anglo-Afghan War, the late-19th-century Durand Line demarcated the spheres of influence of British India's Mortimer Durand and the Afghan amir Abdur Rahman Khan. The single-page agreement in 1947 ending political interference beyond the frontier between Afghanistan and the British Indian Empire, inherited by Pakistan in 1947, divided the indigenous Pashtun tribes. The treaty was ratified in 1905 and 1919 again at the treaty of Rawalpindi.

One of the most notable periods of migration began in 1979. As the Soviet–Afghan War began, many Afghan citizens began to flee the country. The ensuing decade of violence at the hands of Soviet forces encouraged thousands more to follow, escaping what some considered to be "difficult, if not impossible, situations," which included the threat of mass arrests, executions, attacks on public gatherings, the destruction of Afghan infrastructure, as well as the targeting of Afghanistan's agricultural and industrial sectors. In total, nearly three million Afghan refugees escaped to Pakistan and about two million to Iran throughout the decade, though some figures estimate that by 1990, nearly 4.5 million undocumented Afghan refugees resided throughout Pakistan. Aided by the UNHCR, and primarily funded by the United States government, Pakistan continued to accept and support the inclusion of these Afghan refugees throughout the decade. In late 1988, roughly 3.3 million Afghan refugees were housed in 340 refugee camps along the Afghan-Pakistan border in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It was reported by The New York Times in November 1988 that about 100,000 refugees lived in Peshawar and more than two million lived in KP (known as the North-West Frontier Province at the time). On the outskirts of Peshawar, the Jalozai camp was one of the largest refugee camps in the NWFP.

According to one researcher, the refugees consisted of various groups of migrants. Some were individuals "who came from politically prominent and wealthy families with personal and business assets outside Afghanistan; a small group who arrived [had] assets that they could bring with them such as trucks, cars and limited funds and who have done relatively well in Pakistan integrating into the new society and engaging successfully in commerce; those refugees who came from the ranks of the well-educated and include professionals such as doctors, engineers and teachers; refugees who escaped with household goods and herds of sheep, cattle and yaks but for the most part must be helped to maintain themselves; the fifth and the largest group, constituting about 60 per cent of the refugees, are ordinary Afghans who arrived with nothing and are largely dependent on Pakistan and international efforts for sustenance."

Though through migration many Afghan refugees avoided immense violence, they were still subject to political injustice and discrimination at the hands of their host country—Pakistan. The subsequent decade saw change in regard to the attitudes and feelings toward Afghan refugees throughout Pakistan. Though the nation initially welcomed these migrants, utilizing "terms from Islamic discourse to justify welcoming [these] refugees in their time of need", that feeling ended as issues like Kashnikov culture terrorism and ethno nationalism took root in Afghan refugees camps. In order to migrate to Pakistan, Afghan refugees were required to register to one of the seven Islamic parties pre-approved by the Pakistani government. In doing so, the Pakistani government hoped to prevent the emergence of a single, political entity on behalf of the Afghan refugees, and thus, prevent a "Palestinization" of Pakistan by a foreign settler population.

By the mid-1980s the political injustice toward Afghan refugees began to escalate to violence. In 1986 a new political party began to emerge. Known primarily as the "Muhajir Qaumi Movement" (MQM), though also referred to as the "Refugee National Movement," this party sought to gain rights for the 'muhajir' refugees on which 'Pakistan had been built.' Yet, Afghan refugees were not included in this representation, and instead were made a target by the political leaders of the MQM. Included in the MQM's 'Charter of Demands', they requested the immediate placement of Afghan refugees in camps, and the subsequent expropriation of their property, causing a number of riots by Afghan refugees to erupt throughout Pakistan. As the MQM continued to grow throughout the decade, so too did the exclusion and violence toward Afghan refugees. In addition to the violence, the MQM created a rhetoric that largely altered the perception of Afghan refugees, as they were labeled as extremist and alien to the 'secular' Islamic state that the MQM hoped to create within Pakistan.

This "extremist" rhetoric resurfaced after 9/11, and was evidence of the final shift in the attitudes held by Pakistan toward Afghan refugees. Prior to 9/11, the Pakistani government had already stopped the issuing of food rations to refugee villages, yet following the attacks on the World Trade center, and the subsequent global focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan decided to move toward the complete repatriation of Afghan refugees. Claiming that these refugees were to blame for the growing security concerns within the country, along with the subsequent branding of these individuals as terrorists, Pakistan, with support of the UNHCR, began to facilitate "voluntary repatriation". From March to December 2002, Pakistan "voluntarily repatriated" nearly 1.52 million refugees, and an additional 5 million over the following six years. Yet, there is sufficient reasoning to believe that these were not as "voluntary" as advertised, as a joint report from the UNHCR and Pakistan suggested 82% of refugees reported to "not wish to repatriate". Regardless, millions of refugees were subsequently deported, and returned to a country in which they had little-to-no ability to earn a livelihood, which was only further complicated due to the lack of resources in comparison to the number of individuals being repatriated.

Throughout history, most Afghans and Pakistanis have been crossing the border between their countries without passports or visas. But in recent years this illegal travel has been restricted. Pakistan has introduced a "visa regime for different categories of Afghan nationals."

Repatriation and deportation

Since 2002, the UNHCR has helped 4,741,950 Afghan refugees to repatriate from Pakistan to Afghanistan.

In 2005 the government of Pakistan began registering all Afghans, and the number of registered Afghans was reported at 2.15 million in February 2007. They received computer-generated "proof of registration" (PoR) cards with biometric features—similar to the Pakistani Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) but with "Afghan Citizen" on its front.

More than 357,000 Afghans were repatriated from Pakistan in 2007, and Afghans were repatriated between March and October of each subsequent year. Returnees were reportedly to be given land by the Afghan government to build a home, and each person received a travel package worth about $100 (which was increased to $400). About 80 percent of the returnees came from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11 percent from Balochistan, 3 percent from Sindh and the remaining 4 percent from rest of the country.

In June 2010 Pakistan ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture, which forbids member states from deporting, extraditing or returning people where they will be tortured. The government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has increased its efforts toward a large-scale deportation of Afghan refugees from the province. The Afghan minister of refugees and repatriation announced that his ministry would establish 48 towns in Afghanistan for refugees returning from Pakistan and Iran.

Between 2010 and the end of 2012, a reported 229,000 Afghan refugees returned from Pakistan. Some Pakistani officials have estimated that 400,000 non-registered Afghans may be residing in their country.

A total of 380,884 Afghan refugees left Pakistan for Afghanistan in 2016. Most were born and raised in Pakistan but are still counted as citizens of Afghanistan. The UNHCR reported in June 2026 that 777,986 registered Afghan refugees still remained in Pakistan. A small number of Afghans are waiting to be resettled in countries of North America, Europe, Oceania and elsewhere.

In 2023 the Pakistani government announced a plan to evict all illegal immigrants, including Afghan nationals, in a phased and orderly manner. This decision has led to a strong reaction from the unrecognized interim Taliban government. The Islamabad police has finished the process of marking the locations of Afghan individuals residing in various areas of the federal capital. A survey regarding the properties of illegal Afghan nationals was also underway. The interim Taliban government has called Pakistan's decision to expel Afghans living in the country without approval "unacceptable". They have raised alarms for the Pakistani government to "reconsider the decision". The United Nations and human rights groups have also expressed concerns over Pakistani plans to evict illegal Afghan migrants.

By January 2025, over 813,300 individuals had been repatriated to Afghanistan. By 25 September, the number reached around 1.5 million according to the UNHCR.

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