Homeland insecurity: Expelled Afghans seek swift return to Pakistan

PESHAWAR: Pakistan says it has expelled more than a million Afghans in the past two years, yet many have quickly attempted to return -- preferring to take their chances dodging the law than struggle for existence in a homeland some had never even seen before.
"Going back there would be sentencing my family to death," said Hayatullah, a 46-year-old Afghan deported via the Torkham border crossing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in early 2024.
Since April and a renewed deportation drive, some 200,000 Afghans have spilled over the two main border crossings from Pakistan, entering on trucks loaded with hastily packed belongings. But they carry little hope of starting over in the impoverished country, where girls are banned from school after primary level.
Hayatullah, a pseudonym, returned to Pakistan a month after being deported, travelling around 800 kilometres south to the Chaman border crossing in Balochistan, because for him, life in Afghanistan "had come to a standstill."
He paid a bribe to cross the Chaman frontier, "like all the day labourers who regularly travel across the border to work on the other side."
His wife and three children -- including daughters, aged 16 and 18, who would be denied education in Afghanistan -- had managed to avoid arrest and deportation.

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