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Fleeing oppression, facing statelessness: Afghan women in Pakistan

Rokhsar, a 28-year-old woman, was having breakfast with her husband at around 9 a.m. on January 8 when four police officers, one of them a woman, forcibly entered their home.

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Speaking with Zan Times, Rokhsar recounts that she and her husband were in a state of panic and tried to dress properly. However, the police rushed them into a vehicle without giving them a chance to prepare. “They didn’t allow me to put on a warm shawl or grab any essential items. We were still in our home clothes, and our documents were left behind as they forcibly dragged us away,” she tells Zan Times.

The young woman and her husband were taken to Haji Camp, where most Afghan refugees are held for several days before being deported to Afghanistan. The police kept Rokhsar in the women’s section and her husband in the men’s section. Distressed by the separation, Rokhsar tried to resist. “While they were taking us to the camp, I screamed and fainted,” she recounts. “They beat me so badly, but I was unconscious and didn’t realize it. Later, I noticed that my right hand was injured. My husband told me that the Pakistani police had hit my hand.”

Rokhsar and her husband remained in police custody for four days and were not allowed to see each other during this time. “For four days, we had only a thin mat to sleep on and a single blanket to cover ourselves. I had an allergic reaction to the food there, and when I was released from the camp, my whole body was covered in rashes, and I felt nauseous,” she explains.

On January 12, Rokhsar and her husband, along with 44 others, were transported to the Torkham border by Pakistani police. “We were loaded into four pickup trucks. At 9 a.m., we left the camp, and by 2 p.m., we were handed over to the Taliban on Afghan soil,” she says. 

Rokhsar says that the Taliban biometrically registered everyone at the Torkham border and entered their information into a database. “They told us that we are banned from entering Pakistan for an indefinite period of time,” she explains. Rokhsar and her husband were stranded at the side of the road in freezing winter, with no money and nowhere to go. They borrowed a mobile phone from a fellow Afghan and spent two hours trying to contact family members. Eventually, they managed to arrange a car to take them to Kabul.

Rokhsar and her husband had illegally entered Pakistan in May 2024 and spent the last eight months living and working in Islamabad. They fled Kabul after the Taliban intelligence agency issued an arrest warrant for Rokhsar and her husband, accusing them of running a women’s gym. Rokhsar says she secretly trained numerous women in her home after sports facilities were closed to women by the Taliban. A relative warned them about the impending arrest, which gave them enough time to flee their country. 

In Pakistan, they managed to acquire a token from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Pakistan, which marks the first stage of formal refugee recognition. “My husband was a Muay Thai coach, and I was a fitness trainer. In a Pakistani gym, we trained Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, which allowed us to make a living. But now, back in Afghanistan, we have no idea what we’ll do,” Rokhsar says.

According to a report issued from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Pakistan at the end of November, there were 1,347,048 Afghan refugees registered in Pakistan. Of these, 19.7 percent are women aged 18 to 59, 6.4 percent are girls aged 12 to 17, and 1.6 percent are women over 60. However, these figures only represent those refugees officially registered in the country. A significant but unknown number of Afghan refugees continue to illegally enter Pakistan for work and survival, primarily settling in cities like Quetta, Karachi, Peshawar, and areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Since the Taliban takeover, Afghan women fleeing persecution have faced harassment by Pakistani police. Between January 1 and 16 this year, Pakistani police conducted door-to-door searches in Islamabad, detaining and deporting large numbers of Afghan women and children.

Sabzagul, a 34-year-old Afghan woman, was arrested on January 6 along with her two daughters who are 18 and 2. The family had been living in the Bhara Kahu area of Islamabad. Sabzagul recounts her ordeal: “The day we heard that Pakistani police were searching houses for refugees, we locked our home around noon and left. However, three male officers and one female officer stopped me and my daughters in the street and demanded documents, which we didn’t have. They arrested us on the spot.”

Sabzagul, a former civil activist during the Republic era, illegally entered Pakistan with her two daughters on August 28, 2021, two weeks after Kabul fell to the Taliban. Her husband, a soldier in the Afghan National Army under the previous government, was imprisoned by the Taliban for eight months. In March 2022, he managed to join his family in Pakistan also illegally crossing the border.

Though no one in Sabzagul’s family have passports or visas, they all obtained IOM cards. However, Pakistani police do not recognize those cards as valid residency documents. “Obtaining a passport from the Taliban is very difficult,” Sabzagul tells Zan Times. “When my husband was released from prison, he was too afraid of being arrested again to apply for a passport. We also feared for our lives and didn’t return to Afghanistan, staying here without documents.”

After their arrest, Sabzagul and her daughters were transported in a minivan to Haji Camp. Sabzagul recounts seeing numerous women and girls in the camp who had also been arrested for not having valid visas. They were luckier than most – after an hour in the camp, the police sent them home because Sabzagul’s younger daughter cannot survive without medication for a respiratory illness. 

Others wait and worry for a knock on the door from the police. Mehria and her husband were government employees before the Taliban takeover. They lost their jobs. For three years, they worked as undercover journalists, using pseudonyms for their work. In April 2024, Taliban intelligence raided their home and arrested Mehria’s husband. Although her husband was released that day for lack of evidence, the couple feared for their safety. They never returned to their home and lived in hiding for seven months.  Finally exhausted by this life, they secured Pakistani visas and moved to Islamabad in October 2024, hoping for peace and a pathway to resettle in Canada.

On January 1, 2025, Pakistani police knocked on their door. Despite showing his passport and visa extension documents, Mehria’s husband was told his visa had expired and he would be detained ahead of deportation back to Afghanistan. The police did not arrest Mehria, citing her status as a mother of a nursing child. “I thought moving to Pakistan would free us from such problems, but now the Pakistani police are our new challenge,” Mehria says.

With the help of Afghan neighbours, Mehria managed to secure her husband’s release after paying 20,000 Pakistani rupees. As a condition, he had to sign a commitment to renew his visa within a week. Both Mehria and her husband are now anxiously waiting for their visa extensions.

On January 17, police again knocked on their door. “This time, it was just one male police officer, but he was accompanied by the block’s security guard. He asked my husband for his visa. My husband showed it to him. Then he asked, ‘Have your family members also obtained visas?’ My husband replied, ‘Yes, we all have our visas,’” she tells Zan Times. 

That day, the police officer left without arresting anyone, but the anxiety of statelessness weighs heavily on Mehria: “I was so scared that my hands and feet went numb. I began packing the house, even gathering our clothes, so I’d be ready to leave if they told us to.”

Like Mehria, many Afghan women — journalists, human rights activists, civil society activists, and former government employees — have sought refuge in Pakistan. In Afghanistan, these women lost their rights to work, education, and even basic freedoms like visiting parks or sports facilities. Though they fled to neighbouring countries in search of safety, they now endure the hardships of statelessness, unemployment, an uncertain future, and the constant threat of deportation, leaving them in a state of perpetual unrest.

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