Freshta, a mother of six, now lives in a tent about 12km from the Torkham border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Just weeks ago, she was in Pakistan. Now, she is stranded in a dusty camp, separated from her two young sons, with no clear way forward.
She was arrested and deported in late January.
When she first arrived in Afghanistan, she was taken to Omari camp near the border and given a tent. But within days, fighting between the Taliban and Pakistan escalated. Shelling hit the camp, reportedly injuring some of the refugees sheltering there. Residents were moved again, this time to a new site, where about 250 tents scattered across open land, with one mobile health clinic and two small shops.
The repeated displacement has taken its toll. But nothing weighs more heavily on Freshta than the loss of her sons.
At 8am on the day of her arrest, in a refugee camp in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, she sent her eight- and 10-year-old boys to school. By 11.30am, police had arrived.
“They broke our doors and entered our home and started beating the men and dragged us all from our home and deported us to Afghanistan,” she said, speaking in her tent on 13 March. “When the police arrived, I ran to go after my children, but they didn’t allow me. I screamed at them that my children are at school but they said, ‘don’t worry about your children, go back to your country.’”
Since then, she has had no direct contact with them. The only information she has comes from others, who told her the boys may have been detained.
“I have not spoken with them and don’t know what happened to them. My heart is burning for them and I am constantly in agony and can’t sleep or calm down.”
She has sent her four daughters to stay with relatives, saying the camp is no place for “young girls”. Sitting outside her tent, she gestures to the barren surroundings. “Now, I live in a desert as you can see and have nothing left.”
Freshta is one of millions caught up in a mass return of Afghans from Pakistan. According to the UN refugee agency, more than 5.4 million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan since October 2023, many under pressure or by force. In the first two months of 2026 alone, nearly 150,000 people have returned or deported from Pakistan.
Earlier waves of deportations had already strained Afghanistan’s limited capacity to absorb returnees. Now, renewed conflict along the border which displaced close to 115,000 internally, is compounding the crisis.
On Monday, a Pakistani strike on a rehabilitation centre in Kabul killed hundreds of civilians. “A reported overnight strike on the Omid Drug Rehabilitation Facility in Kabul, managed by the Ministry of Interior, killed more than 400 people, and injured at least 250, who were being treated for substance use disorders,” said the World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The WHO said it was working to verify the incident and warned that escalating violence is placing additional strain on Afghanistan’s already fragile health system.
UN officials also say several hundred Afghan civilians – including 104 children and 59 women – have been killed or injured since hostilities escalated in late February. Tens of thousands have been displaced, particularly in the south and south-east.
Key facilities meant to receive returnees have also been affected. The Omari transit centre near Torkham and the Takhtapul reception centre near Spin Boldak have both been hit by strikes.
For those already forced back across the border, the conflict has deepened an already precarious existence.
Shafiqa, 50, and her family were deported eight months ago after years in Pakistan’s Punjab province, where her husband worked in brick kilns and supported their family of seven. They, too, ended up in Omari camp before being displaced again when fighting broke out in late February. “The police there treated us very badly and deported us by force,” she said. She describes months of fear before their removal. “Whenever the police came into the house, the men had to run toward the river and hide. We women were left alone in the house, screaming in fear. We were truly not allowed to live a normal life.”
Even basic healthcare became inaccessible. “We could not even take our children to the doctor. I myself was ill and needed medication, but I could not go to the hospital.”
Back in Afghanistan, conditions have proven no easier. When fighting intensified near the border, she said, “bullets fell like rain”.
“Now that we have come here, to a new camp in an open field, we have only set up a single tent. We have no place and no home.”
Work is scarce. “My husband knows cooking and can run a small shop, but he cannot find any work. We are extremely helpless; we do not even have anything to eat for iftar during the month of Ramadan.”
For many returnees, displacement is not just physical but cultural.
Omar, a father of five, was born and raised in Pakistan and had rarely set foot in Afghanistan before his deportation seven months ago. He worked as a labourer and said his family had a stable life.
“My children went to school, my wife was happy at home, and we would gather together every night. We had a relatively good life, but suddenly, everything changed,” he said from Arghandab district in Kandahar.
Like others, his family was arrested and transported to the border in a cramped bus.
“We had lived in Pakistan for a very long time … but when we came to Afghanistan, everything was different. The dialect, customs, even the way children go to school are different.”
He worries particularly about his daughters, who cannot continue their education beyond grade six.
In Kunduz province, Rabia, 27, is facing a different kind of struggle. Deportation five months ago forced her family into a life of acute poverty. “If my heart and my eyes had a voice, no one would be able to bear hearing my story,” she said.
Before being deported, she worked as a tailor, earning enough to help support her household, while her husband worked in a shop. They could afford food, healthcare and rent. Now, even basic necessities are out of reach. During the interview, her infant cried continuously. The family cannot afford formula. Her husband travels to the city each day in search of work but often returns empty-handed. “We can’t even buy milk for this poor child,” she said. “Our neighbour has a cow and, every other day, gives us a bowl of milk so we can feed him.”
Neither she nor her husband had lived in Afghanistan before.
“We came through Chaman. As soon as we entered Afghanistan, our confusion began. We slept on stones and dirt … we had no medicine, no treatment, no bread, and no shelter.”
She sees little prospect of improvement. “If this unemployment and wandering continues, the future will only be worse.”
The crackdown in Pakistan has also affected Afghans who had travelled there legally.
Zainab, 47, a former teacher, went to Quetta on 26 February to seek treatment for kidney disease. Widowed, she depends on her 24-year-old son, who works as a street vendor in Herat. They had valid visas and had spent significant savings preparing for her treatment.
On 4 March, they were deported.
“When we were in Quetta, the situation in the city itself was relatively calm,” she said. But as tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan escalated, deportations intensified.
They were staying in a hotel with other Afghan migrants. “The hotel was very dirty and the food was unhygienic,” she said. One day, she asked her son to go out to buy food and water. He did not return until evening.
He had been arrested, despite carrying valid documents, including her passport. After failing to persuade police to release him, he asked to be deported alongside his mother.
“When I reached the border, everything was chaotic. People were running in every direction. There was the sound of gunfire and explosions … Children were hungry and thirsty—there was no one to help them.”
“My son and I never imagined we would make it back alive,” she said. “On one hand, we had lost all the money we spent on the visa and treatment. On the other hand, our psychological state was shattered. I did not eat anything during the journey—my kidney condition worsened, and I survived only by drinking water.”
For families like Freshta’s, the future remains uncertain. In the camp near Torkham, the days pass in waiting — for news, for work, for some sign of stability.
But for now, she is left with questions that no one can answer.
“I don’t know what has happened to my children,” she said. “I don’t know if they are safe or not.”
Taher Ahmadi and Abdullah Yaqoobi* contributed to this report.
