This report has been published in partnership with the Guardian
At 12 am on 28 February, Alma* stood at the check-in counter at Karachi airport with her husband and three-year-old son, holding tickets she believed would finally take them to safety.
The Afghan journalist, who fled the Taliban in October 2024, had already been denied boarding once and missed on February 26. Since they were flying with a tourist visa to a country in Africa, they booked a return flight to Karachi which they didn’t plan to use.
But the Pakistani officials at the airport refused them boarding. They booked new flights, this time with a return ticket to Kabul. But, officials from Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency refused to let the family board again.
“The officers told us to go back to Afghanistan and fly wherever we want to from there. They said we cannot fly to our destination from Pakistan.”
Within hours, she and her family would also be turned away from a hotel because of their Afghan passports.
Alma’s ordeal is unfolding as Pakistan declares itself in “open war” with Afghanistan following escalating cross-border strikes, a development that Afghan refugees say has triggered a sharp increase in police raids, arrests and deportations across major cities.
For the estimated millions of Afghans living in Pakistan, many of them journalists, activists or former government officials who fled Taliban rule, the rising tension is now translating into fear at their doorsteps.
Returning to Afghanistan will put them at “real risk of violent retaliatory attacks”, says Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan,
Months of clashes have flared up since last Thursday, when Afghanistan launched attacks along the frontier and Pakistani forces hit back on the border and from the skies.
After being refused boarding on 28 February, Alma says they took a taxi to a nearby hotel. Staff initially allowed them inside, but when they saw the Afghan passports, they were ordered to leave.
“The employee opened the door and said you have one second to empty the room. When we asked for a reason, he replied, ‘it is an order from high up, I am just an employee who is tasked with implementing it’.”
Alma is working with one of Afghanistan’s exiled media covering Taliban’s human rights violations. If deported to Afghanistan, she says her reporting would put her life at risk. “On Sunday, I woke up to the news of war in Iran and the protest in Karachi. For a few minutes I felt I was suffocating, couldn’t breath and felt this is the end,” she says.
A friend in Islamabad is currently offering her shelter, but she fears arrest at any moment. “I am an Afghan woman journalist with nowhere to go,” she says.
Other refugees living in Pakistan have described the police actively looking for, and arresting, Afghans.
In the city of Quetta, around 100km from the Afghan border, Leila* described a night of pounding knocks echoing through her building. Her neighbour — an Afghan woman studying on a valid visa — had already seen her husband arrested two days earlier. When loud banging began at her door late at night on Friday, February 27, Leila sensed what was happening.
“At that moment, I said to myself that it must be the police, because my friend didn’t answer my message. I sat silently in my room. My mother was asleep. Since coming to Pakistan, I have been taking pills. Because of the intense stress, my heart was in severe pain and I was crying.”
Leila says three neighbours were arrested that night, including two with valid visas. “My friend later messaged that they were taken to the camp. After that, communication was cut off. Pakistani police used to take money and then let people go. But now they only deport.”
Across Karachi, Islamabad, Quetta and Peshawar, Afghans report new checkpoints and house-to-house searches.
Abdul*, an investigative journalist who fled Taliban rule after previously being deported from Iran, arrived in Pakistan in July 2025. His two-month visa was not renewed. Since September, he has been arrested twice. “The first time I paid 15,000 Pakistani rupee. The second time, I paid 20,000,” he says.
Abdul and his family rent a home under another person’s name. When police knock, a neighbour with valid papers answers. “When the police search house to house, we often hide outside, that is how the police arrested me twice on the street,” he says
In a Facebook group of more than 44,000 Afghan refugees, posts since 26 February have focused on sound alarms about the areas the police search, the check-points and where is safer.
“Tonight, after 12 am, the police raided our neighborhood and arrested all the men … it is not clear where they were taken,” said one post. “The situation is very bad,” another wrote. “Everyone should be ready to go back to Afghanistan.”
On 27 February, journalist Zarghona Akbari said police arrested her and her children from Rawalpindi despite her valid visa and transferred them to Punjab. “Tonight they came again … right now they are transferring us to the camp from the police station,” she said in a voice message asking journalists for help.
Azadah contributed to this report.
