Afghans awaited U.S. resettlement. Pakistan sent them back to the Taliban.
More than 1 million Afghans have been pressured to leave or deported by Pakistan. Many were former U.S. contractors approved for U.S. resettlement, now on hold under Trump.
For Mursal, the nightmares began in late January.
That’s when the 28-year-0ld Afghan woman learned that President Donald Trump, in one of his first acts back in office, had suspended all refugee arrivals to the United States.
The former economics student’s father had worked for U.S.-funded media projects during the 20-year war in Afghanistan. After the Taliban toppled the U.S.-backed government in Kabul in 2021, the Biden administration promised them safe haven in America.
They sold their belongings, moved to Pakistan and awaited what they and tens of thousands of refugees believed to be imminent resettlement in the U.S. Now she feared she would be deported back to Afghanistan under the Taliban’s repressive rule.
The nightmare came true in July. With their U.S. resettlement cases still pending, Mursal and her family joined the more than 1 million Afghans pressured to leave or be forcibly deported by Pakistani officials in the past 2½ years, the U.N. estimates.
Now, they’re hiding in Afghanistan not only from the Taliban, which have imposed increasingly harsh restrictions on Afghan females, but also from family and friends.
“Everyone knows we worked with the U.S.,” Mursal told The Washington Post via a secure messaging app. “We fear what will happen if someone informs the Taliban’s intelligence unit.” Like other Afghans in this report, she spoke on the condition her full name be withheld out of concern for her safety.
When Pakistan began deporting Afghans en masse in fall 2023, the Biden administration gave letters of protection to Mursal and others who were waiting for U.S. resettlement. For almost two years, Pakistani authorities largely complied with U.S. requests to shield those who had supported the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan or were otherwise eligible for resettlement.
But that has changed in recent months. Pakistani officials appear to no longer believe the U.S. is serious about resettling the Afghans who have been left behind, according to interviews with seven Afghans who have recently been deported from the country.
“Trump has created this chaos,” said Taimor, a 36-year-old former contractor for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He fled Afghanistan, he said, after the Taliban detained and tortured him for his work in 2022. He was deported back to the country in July.
The Pakistani Interior Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. A senior Foreign Ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, acknowledged “missteps at the operational level by law enforcement.”
But he disputed that Afghans awaiting resettlement in the U.S. have been deported in large numbers. “Individuals who were mistakenly deported have later been facilitated to return,” he said.
The White House did not comment and the State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
“We’re not hearing a lot from government anymore,” said Shawn VanDiver, the Navy veteran who leads AfghanEvac, which helps Afghans flee the country. “They just frankly don’t seem to care."
Taliban officials say returnees have nothing to fear. They cite a general amnesty for all members of the U.S.-backed Afghan administration the regime declared in August 2021.
But the U.N. warned in July that some are still subjected to “serious human rights violations” including “torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary arrest and detention, and threats to personal security.” Women, former employees of the previous government, media workers and members of civil society are at particularly high risk, the U.N. said.
Some refugees say Trump has appeared more eager in recent months to regain control of Afghanistan’s Bagram air base than with their plight.
“If the U.S. is serious about wanting to return to Bagram, the Taliban will take it out on us,” Taimor said. “They take this very seriously.”
‘There is no mercy’
Many recent deportees could have applied to resettle in Europe or elsewhere. But several told The Post they wanted to go to the U.S., and trusted the government would keep its word.
The Biden administration resettled about 200,000 Afghans after the fall of Kabul. Around 20,000 cases were still being processed when Trump suspended resettlements, according to Pakistani officials. Thousands, having depleted their savings, are stuck.
“In all these years, we haven’t received a penny from the U.S.,” said a 34-year old civil rights activist. He had just been told his resettlement was imminent when Trump suspended the program, he said, but has since been deported to Afghanistan.
Many of the refugees are paying for their own accommodations in Pakistan. Some have been flushed out of their hideouts in recent months as Pakistani officials threaten to fine landlords found to be hosting migrants with expired visas.
The civil rights activist’s landlord brought police to evict him in April. He showed the officers the protection letter confirming that his U.S. resettlement case was being processed, he said, but “they tore it apart and threw it into my face.”
Pakistan’s crackdown appears to have grown more severe. When Pakistani officers detained Taimor in the past, he said, they would find his name among a list of people under U.S. protection and let him go.
“But in July,” he said, “they came back, arrested us, and this time they didn’t listen.”
Only one of the seven deportees interviewed by The Post has been able to return to Pakistan, and only on a short-term visa. (He needed help from relatives to buy the expensive document.)
Two refugees interviewed by The Post said they were beaten by Pakistani officers. “There is no mercy,” said Frotan, a 33-year-old former Afghan Air Force captain. He was detained, he said, alongside a former judge. Both fell under categories particularly vulnerable to Taliban retribution, according to the U.N.
When he arrived at a deportation camp, he said, police demanded a $600 bribe to release him. Unable to pay, he said, he was locked in an overcrowded prison cell, together with elderly people, babies, and a woman who said she had no relatives left in Afghanistan.
“They laughed and played an Afghan song, telling her to enjoy it,” he said.
A 22-year-old man described being imprisoned in a hot, mass holding cell with a door that was opened only three times a day. When a woman passed out, he said, detainees banged on the door for half an hour before Pakistani officers responded.
Mursal’s mother was separated from the family, she said, and detained in one of the camps.
“She’s still traumatized,” she said. “Our family is going through a very difficult time.”
Returnees fear being recognized
As Mursal and her sister crossed the Pakistani border into Afghanistan, they held each other’s hands tightly. Her sister had wanted to become a midwife; Mursal wanted to resume her economic studies. They’re unlikely careers for women under the Taliban.
The Taliban border guards questioned them.
“They wanted to know: Why are you alone?” Mursal recalled. “Thankfully, our father was waiting on the other side of the border.” Traveling without a male relative would have violated the regime’s restrictions on women’s movement.
Others feared immediate arrest for their U.S. ties. “I was shaking,” Taimor said. But the Taliban, which have seen more than 2 million Afghans return this year from Iran and Pakistan, appeared too overwhelmed to search phones or to question most returnees, he said.
For many, the greater fear is being recognized by former neighbors in tight-knit communities where not only the Taliban but local elders keep close watch.
None of the deportees who spoke to The Post felt safe returning to their old neighborhoods. Nearly all said they were relying on close relatives for housing and financial support.
To avoid being recognized, Taimor said, “we only go outside during the night.”
To avoid being recognized, Taimor said, “we only go outside during the night.”
Many fear it’s only a matter of time until the Taliban finds them. Matiullah, a 34-year-old former Afghan air force pilot, has so far avoided deportation from Pakistan but has had several close calls with police.
“When the Taliban took Kabul, they had no information,” he said. But the regime’s apparatus has become more professional in the four years since, “and now they know my name, my position, everything.”
Formoly, a 39-year-old Afghan who spent 15 years working with U.S.-backed organizations, said the Taliban appear increasingly paranoid about potential spies. When the Taliban detained and questioned a relative’s friend who had once applied to the U.S. military in a translator role, he said, they wanted to know two things: Was he still in touch with the Americans — and were they planning to reinvade?
When Formoly was deported to Afghanistan last month, he sent urgent messages to his U.S. contacts pleading for help.
“All I’ve received are automated replies, thanking me for my emails,” he said.
