Leaving Home<\/p>
Read parts one<\/a>,\u00a0three<\/a> and four<\/a>.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n More than five million Afghans have returned<\/a> to Afghanistan since the end of 2023, around 10% of the country\u2019s population. Nearly three million came back in 2025 alone, two-thirds from Iran and one-third from Pakistan, said Charlie Goodlake, head of external relations for the UN refugee agency UNHCR. \u201cFor many Afghans, there are no good options \u2013 not in Iran, not in Pakistan, and not upon return,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The circumstances of their move are often difficult to discuss openly, when their legal status, family security and future mobility remain uncertain. Pakistan\u2019s government has given several reasons for the mass repatriation of Afghans under its Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan<\/a> \u2013 national security, economic stability and legal regulation. From Iran, Afghans have fled in search of safety from escalating hostilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Gul and his family, the question is not just leaving or arriving. It is what they are returning to. When they came back, they found themselves in the throes of a winter so severe it left 61 people<\/a> dead in three days. \u201cWe suffered in the rains. We did not even have bedding or blankets. It was only our gawandi <\/em>(neighbour) who gave us some out of kindness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Afghanistan has seen four decades of armed conflict, and it is also one of the world\u2019s most vulnerable<\/a> countries to climate change. For displaced people on both sides of the Durand Line that means the violence of conflict is compounded by climatic extremes, said Hafiz Abdul Qadeem Abrar, spokesperson for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) Afghanistan. \u201cFrost waves, floods, and now the expected heatwaves in the summer,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When returnees first make their way across a volatile border, they are brought to camps, where they receive an initial medical assessment and treatment, some food, shelter and necessities. But the influx is incessant, and they are soon encouraged to go to their native areas. \u201cIRC in collaboration with the government is giving both awareness and aid to refugees, especially about how to survive in a harsh climate. But no matter how much is done, it is never enough. Women and children suffer the most; they are lost without a home,\u201d Abrar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What they return to is not stability. It is a country ravaged by conflict and natural disasters \u2013 floods, prolonged drought, repeated crop losses. Destruction so profound, that there is mass internal displacement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maisam Shafiey, advocacy manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)<\/a> Afghanistan, said: \u201cMany families in Badghis [province] have been forced to leave their homes due to drought and the loss of their livelihoods, relocating to Herat. On the other hand, the devastating earthquake in eastern Afghanistan [last year] displaced<\/a> thousands of people, forcing many to live in informal settlements and leaving them in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The earthquake affected<\/a> areas hosting many recent returnees, said Charlie Goodlake. \u201cMany had only just returned and were trying to rebuild their lives. Some families have now experienced triple displacement \u2013 first to Pakistan or Iran, then back to Afghanistan, and then displaced again within the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is not that civil society isn\u2019t helping. But barely a quarter will be able to get the full support they need. The people (who need assistance) are simply too many.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shahtaj (name changed) is still getting used to Kabul. He didn\u2019t grow up in Kabul. He wasn\u2019t even born in Kabul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His parents moved from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the late 1970s, where he was born some years later. He grew up with the many stories about the difficulties they faced; with a tangled sense of identity \u2013 never knowing what he could really call home. \u201cGrowing up outside one\u2019s homeland affects the way one sees identity, belonging and security. No matter what you do, and no matter how long you live in another country, you are still seen as an alien, a foreigner. That feeling stays with you,\u201d Shahtaj said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That feeling, that uncertainty in the pit of the stomach, did not leave when he and his family took the decision to return to Afghanistan. Here too, he felt like an outsider. \u201cComing to a country where I had never lived before, everything seemed new and different. Although Afghanistan was my homeland by origin, in practical terms, it was still unfamiliar to me. That made the process of settling back difficult,\u201d Shahtaj said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen we speak to people at the border, the challenges they describe are layered and complex,\u201d Goodlake said. \u201cSome were not even born in Afghanistan. Others, returning after decades, face deep social and cultural readjustments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet, estrangement doesn\u2019t come only from violence or the feeling of not belonging. It is sharpened by the real, visceral, tangible effects of climate extremes that make difficult lives harder still. When Maria Patel, for instance, founder of TheDisplacement.com, visited the oldest Afghan camp in Karachi in May 2025, she discovered that refugees had been asked to evacuate the area in a matter of months. By September, they were all gone. \u201cWhen I asked them how the climate has impacted their lives in Pakistan, they said that since they live in temporary settlements<\/a>, they face long hours of load-shedding which becomes unbearable during heatwaves<\/a>. The drainage is improper which means flooding during the rain, and children fall in them when they are playing,\u201d Patel shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The settlements were temporary, and often, roofs would collapse or walls would be torn down in the torrential rain. \u201cOn top of all this, they feared that upon their return to Afghanistan, they will have to live in camps, in unknown terrain, and wondered how they would navigate such climatic conditions,\u201d Patel said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some refuse to return. When Dr Maryam (name changed) left Afghanistan as the Taliban regained control of the country a few years ago, she was in her 50s, a respected gynaecologist with an illustrious career and a comfortable life. She left everything behind except her family, and some valuables worth USD 100. \u201cFor a woman, her home is everything. But I am happy in Pakistan. At least I am safe here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But as a woman and a doctor, Maryam worries for those making arduous journeys across international boundaries. \u201cPrivate hospitals don\u2019t admit refugees unless we have proper documents which in most cases we don\u2019t,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd in camps and shelters, severe winters or floods take their toll on pregnant women and children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Patel\u2019s experience during her research on refugees, she found that women were fighting acute mental health challenges, often helpless in the face of harassment but unable to file complaints. \u201cAdvocate Umer Gilani stepped in to help them by setting up a hotline. But still there was a lot of work which needed to be done and that\u2019s when I set up TheDisplacement.com where I also penned down a policy brief catering for people displaced by climate and conflict,\u201d said Patel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is clear Afghanistan needs help, relief workers on the ground say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The need for humanitarian assistance in the country was already projected to reach around 22 million people<\/a> in 2026, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). But Shafiey, of NRC Afghanistan, believes the situation is deteriorating even further with the return of millions of Afghans from neighbouring countries, the displacement of thousands, and the natural disasters that force families to live in the open or informal settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese overlapping crises are significantly increasing needs and require urgent international attention and scaled up funding,\u201d Shafiey said. \u201cWe call on the international community to honour and fully deliver on their pledges to Afghanistan, particularly in support of the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan<\/a> (HNRP). In 2025, only 41.7%<\/a> of the pledged funding was met, leaving critical gaps in life-saving assistance for millions in need.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Imran Khan, former country director of the US Institute of Peace, said attention has been drawn away from the situation in Afghanistan by burgeoning conflict elsewhere \u2013 such as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza or the Iran-US-Israel war. \u201cIn Washington DC or London or Geneva, policymakers must not have the time to come up with ideas for Afghan refugees. And under the global leadership of President Trump, the climate change agenda has suffered irreparable damage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given this context, Khan said there was little hope that the \u201cworld elites\u201d would come to the rescue of Afghan refugees. \u201cEven Pakistan has changed its policy of being a refuge. It\u2019s calculus primarily shifted after 2023 when the Afghan Taliban came to power. Pakistani policymakers accuse the government in Kabul of taking actions against Pakistani security forces and civilians in the last two years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But while he understood why Islamabad felt compelled to act, Khan said the move had forsaken Afghan refugees who had lived in Pakistan for decades. \u201cAfghanistan is still far from stable and safe, and many regions have been deeply impacted by the effects of climate change. I think the UN and international community hasn\u2019t been proactive on this issue. Pakistan has little support or incentive to keep hosting millions of Afghans, other than a moral imperative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Charlie Goodlake, the case for support is simple: to ensure return is a \u201cmoment of hope, not the start of another cycle of displacement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because there are occasions when Shahtaj in Kabul feels like he is teetering on the brink of another tectonic decision: to become a climate and conflict migrant for the third time. He often sits and weighs the costs; costs he knows well. \u201cMigration will lead to our cultural erosion. Second or third generation migrants grow up with a weaker connection to our customs, our ways of life, our languages,\u201d Shahtaj worries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet, it is a decision he is forced to consider. \u201cIt is an unfortunate thought, but it is a real one. Migration has affected more than one generation in my family. I had hoped that this cycle would end with us,\u201d Shahtaj said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut there are times when it feels inevitable, because Afghanistan\u2019s trials are not over yet.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Millions of Afghans forced back across the border are returning to a country where conflict, climate and hardship make rebuilding fragile from the start<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20000074,"featured_media":60133690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[761],"tags":[519,13887,50040706],"hashtags":[],"country":[20000115],"class_list":["post-60133678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","tag-climate-impacts","tag-conflict","tag-migration","country-afghanistan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"men](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Afghan-refugees-in-Pakistan_Alamy_3AGMN03-scaled.jpg\")
<\/div>![\"large](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Afghan-refugee-camp_Almay_2T594CA.jpg\")
<\/div>Coming home as a stranger<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"women](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Torkham-border_Alamy_2T59454.jpg\")
<\/div>The next displacement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n