Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan is the only home Mohammad Laal Khan has known. He was born here. He married here. His children were born here. He buried his eldest brother here.
But a late-night police raid in November last year shattered his sense of belonging.
Khan was born in South Waziristan, a tribal district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a few years after his parents fled the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Since the 1990s, the family — including Khan’s mother, four brothers, their families, and other relatives — has lived in the suburbs of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad in mud-plastered houses without electricity or other basic utilities.
Now he is on Pakistan’s list for deportation.
“It is as if being an Afghan is a curse upon our existence,” Khan, 36, told Al Jazeera on a recent March afternoon in the same room where dozens of police officers had stormed in, threatening to take away all the men.
Khan says, despite much pleading, four of his brothers were taken away and charged with living in the country “illegally”. Their ordeal ended after two weeks when a court granted them bail.
The entire family possesses Afghan Citizenship Cards (ACC), a government-sanctioned identification document issued to Afghan citizens living in Pakistan. But over the past two years, between September 2023 and February 2025, a systemic government crackdown on Afghan nationals has resulted in the expulsion of nearly 850,000 Afghans from Pakistan, including women and children.
Now, hundreds of thousands of ACC-holding Afghans like Khan, having spent almost their entire lives in Pakistan, face expulsion from April 1.
“We don’t know anything about Afghanistan. We have lived here all our lives, made friends here, built our businesses here. If the government insists on throwing us out, we will leave, but we will return once again,” Khan said.
“This is our home.”
Pakistan’s deportation plan
Pakistan currently hosts more than 2.5 million Afghans, according to government estimates.
Among them, about 1.3 million possess a Proof of Registration (PoR) card, first introduced in 2006 and issued by the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, while another 800,000 hold an ACC, issued in 2017.
These documents were previously recognised as proof of legitimate residence in Pakistan.
Not any more.
In a two-page document issued in January, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office outlined a three-phase “relocation” plan.
The first phase targets the deportation of all Afghans now viewed as undocumented — including ACC holders. The second phase focuses on PoR cardholders, who have been granted relief to stay until June 2025. The final phase will address Afghan citizens who are awaiting relocation to third countries.
Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry said the government was firm in its stance, despite pleas from the UNHCR and global rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International.
“We have hosted Afghans in the country for four decades, showing our hospitality and generosity, but it cannot continue indefinitely. They will have to return,” he told Al Jazeera.
With the start of this new wave of deportations slated for around Eid — Pakistan celebrates the otherwise festive occasion on March 31 — the deadline has prompted criticism. Many see it as an effort to wrongfully demonise Afghan nationals by linking them to criminal activities.
In recent years, Pakistan has suffered from a series of deadly attacks by armed groups that Islamabad alleges operate from Afghanistan. This has also led to a spike in tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers.
“Pakistani officials should immediately stop coercing Afghans to return home and give those facing expulsion the opportunity to seek protection,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at HRW, in a March 19 statement.
Calling the deadline “unyielding and cruel”, Amnesty International also urged Pakistan to reconsider its decision.
“These opaque executive orders contravene the government’s own promises and repeated calls by human rights organizations to uphold the rights of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers,” said Isabelle Lassee, deputy regional director for South Asia at Amnesty International, in a March 26 statement.
But echoing Chaudhry’s sentiments, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has insisted that the government had “fulfilled its obligations” by hosting Afghans and was not bound to consult the UNHCR.
However, Qaiser Afridi, the spokesperson for the UNHCR, said they are concerned that among the ACC holders, there may be some individuals who may require international protection.
“We are urging the government to see their situation through a humanitarian lens. We also call for engagement between Pakistan and Afghanistan so that their return can be dignified and voluntary,” Afridi told Al Jazeera.
That alone, Afridi said, would ensure that “reintegration in Afghanistan is sustainable”.
‘Why are we being pushed away?’
Originally from Kunduz in Afghanistan, Khan’s family relocated to Islamabad in the early 1990s and has lived there ever since.
Khan’s room has rough, mud-plastered walls enclosing a modest space with folded mattresses, a simple rug, and a few personal belongings.
Sitting quietly in the room was Khan’s mother, Guldana Bibi, 71, with a wrinkled face, deep-set hazel eyes, and a scarf covering her head.
“I have lived in this country for four decades. My children, my grandchildren, were all born here. My husband was my last connection to Afghanistan, and he died years ago. Why are we being pushed away?” she said.
Along with his brothers, Khan ran a wood shuttering business, but twice in the last 10 years – in 2015 and 2023 – they were forced to stop work and sell what they had in their shops due to government crackdowns on Afghans. Khan claims he incurred losses of nearly 1.8 million rupees ($6,400).
“People ask why we haven’t done better economically. My response is, how can you when your life is repeatedly uprooted, or you’re forced to pay bribes just to exist?” Khan said, sitting cross-legged with his arms folded.
“Pakistan and Afghanistan are neighbours. That will never change. But hating each other will solve nothing, nor will sending people back.”
‘This cafe is my life’
Roughly 10km (6 miles) away, in a small but brightly lit and colourfully decorated cafe, Benazir Raofi sat waiting for customers. She has lived in Pakistan for 35 years.
Raofi’s father was part of the Afghan government, and when civil war erupted after the Soviet withdrawal, her family left the country. While her parents and seven siblings were able to leave for India, she was stopped. She was forced to stay back in Afghanistan.
“I was only 12 years old. My uncle took care of me before we eventually moved to Pakistan in December 1990,” Raofi told Al Jazeera.
Raofi says it is the Pakistani people who give her hope. After acquiring her ACC in 2017, she worked for international NGOs as well as a local travel agent.
In 2021, she won a grant for a project for her idea to create a community space for women and children, which eventually turned into an Afghan Women Solidarity Cafe and Restaurant in the summer of that year, before the Taliban took over Kabul.
The walls of the vibrant, but cluttered cafe are adorned with framed certificates, small decorative objects, and artificial vines with flowers. On one of the walls is a large photo of the Darul Aman, a historic three-storey palace in Afghanistan.
“When Afghan nationals come to visit the cafe, it reminds them of home,” Raofi said, with a smile. “I just wanted to provide a space for families, but after the fall of Kabul, my café became a sanctuary for so many Afghans. It not only allowed me to earn an honest living, but also to be helpful to the community,” she added.
However, she now fears what the government might do to ACC holders like her.
“I am a single woman, and I am who I am because of regular, common Pakistanis who have supported, protected and nurtured me,” she said, sipping her kahva, a hot beverage made with green tea leaves, cinnamon, and cardamom.
Raofi, who continues to run the cafe, says despite facing health-related setbacks and even theft at her house two years ago, her life in Pakistan was comfortable, and despite the government’s deportation plan, she was never bothered, nor did she worry.
Until this year.
“Since January, police have come to my cafe twice and told me I cannot work here, and I should leave the city. But why should I? This city is my home for the last 30 years. This cafe is my life,” she said.
With the deportation deadline looming, Raofi admits she has no contingency plan.
“I have no option. I have survived alone. Nobody wants to be a refugee, but what other country can I go to when Pakistan is all I know? I will die here, but I won’t leave.”
