Pakistan deportation drive disrupts HE corridor for Afghans

For decades Pakistan has served as an educational lifeline for Afghans, a place where young people pursued degrees in medicine, engineering, business, and IT.

For Afghan women especially, Pakistan offers one of the last remaining pathways to higher education after the Taliban banned schooling for girls above grade six. Now, that education corridor is collapsing under an aggressive drive by Pakistan to repatriate Afghan citizens.

Pakistan this year intensified the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan (IFRP), a sweeping policy launched in late 2023 which targets Afghans who lack valid documents. It was driven by security concerns and a rise in attacks which Pakistan attributes to Taliban militants crossing the border. Fighting broke out between Afghan and Pakistani forces along the border in October, and tensions remain high.

The crackdown escalated after the government declared that the Proof of Registration (PoR) cards held by more than 1.3 million Afghans, and which gave them temporary legal status, had expired at the end of June 2025.

From 1 September, repatriations began in full, with PoR holders among those ordered to leave. Human rights groups say many of the returns are not voluntary and warn that Pakistan is no longer distinguishing between undocumented migrants and long-settled families, including enrolled university students.

According to updated United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) data, more than 360,000 Afghans had returned from Pakistan by early August 2025, a surge driven partly by fears of arrest and partly by official pressure, with the UNHCR documenting widespread detentions. These include detentions of registered refugees and students without a visa. Monthly returns peaked in April and remained high through the middle of the year.

Scholarship holders affected

The policy shift has thrown thousands of Afghan students into turmoil. Among those affected are recipients of Pakistan’s own higher education scholarships.

Pakistan’s Allama Muhammad Iqbal Scholarships for Afghan Students, run by its Higher Education Commission (HEC), is one of Islamabad’s flagship soft power programmes. The scheme promises 4,500 fully funded scholarships for Afghans over three years, covering university tuition, accommodation, living expenses, books, and travel.

On paper, it is a symbol of educational cooperation at a time when Afghan universities under Taliban rule are cut off from much of the world. But as Pakistan’s deportations have gathered pace, students have reported that the scholarship pipeline has begun to seize up.

In July, around 350 students – including 50 PhD candidates and more than 100 master’s students – successfully entered Pakistan to begin pre-sessional courses. Yet dozens of other scholarship holders never made it past the border.

Students in major Afghan cities like the capital, Kabul, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif told University World News their visa applications have been stalled for weeks, with little communication from Pakistan’s diplomatic missions. Student visas for Afghan nationals were introduced in late 2020.

One scholarship awardee, speaking on condition of anonymity earlier this month, said he and his peers had been waiting more than 50 days for visas despite submitting all required documents at the HEC portal.

“Classes have already started. If we don’t reach Pakistan soon, we will lose our place in the programme,” he said.

Delays in visa processing have become so widespread that Pakistan extended its scholarship applications deadline from 30 September to 10 October, officially citing the prolonged internet blackout in Afghanistan. This move was widely interpreted as acknowledging that students were struggling to start their courses on time.

Among those caught up in the chaos were Afghan students studying in Pakistan who had returned home for the summer break and who could not re-enter due to a halt in visa processing by Pakistan since July, without any explanation being provided by the authorities.

The HEC, too, did not respond to University World News requests for comment. Students said they feared being disenrolled from their academic programmes.

Fear of detention

Inside Pakistan, even those who arrived legally now find themselves vulnerable. With PoR cards having expired and visa renewals uncertain, many Afghan students live with a daily fear of being detained despite being enrolled in universities.

Several students described heightened police checks, demands for additional paperwork, and warnings from landlords in Pakistan’s cities wary of renting to Afghans.

Shogufta Safi from eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province is an economics student at a private university in Peshawar. She said her academic life has been overshadowed by constant uncertainty.

“Those of us who are halfway through our degrees are caught in limbo and pushed into grim uncertainties,” she told University World News.

“We cannot focus on studying when at any moment a checkpoint can decide our future,” she said, referring to control points inside Pakistan where increased surveillance is aimed at Afghan refugees.

Some university-age women have stopped attending classes after relatives were detained on public transport. Parents of female students are afraid to send their daughters out alone, several families said.

Many younger Afghans in Pakistan have never even lived in Afghanistan and now face being sent back. Shukria Alizai, born and raised in Pakistan’s Peshawar, finished her schooling and dreamed of becoming a doctor.

Leaving Pakistan, she says, would mean “ending my education forever”. Under Taliban rule, women are barred from secondary school, universities, and most vocational training.

Rights advocates warn that Pakistan’s policy is undermining one of its most successful humanitarian initiatives. “Afghan students, many of whom were born or raised in Pakistan, have contributed positively to academic and social spaces for years,” said refugee lawyer Moniza Kakar.

“But this crackdown has led to the closure of educational opportunities. We have cases of enrolled students disappearing overnight – some deported, others forced into hiding.”

Kakar told University World News Pakistan needs a clear, humane policy that distinguishes students from broader migration enforcement.

“Issuing temporary protection or education visas to enrolled Afghan students would allow them to complete their degrees without fear. Deporting young people who are pursuing education serves neither Pakistan’s interests nor regional stability,” she said.

UNHCR and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization data show that before the repatriation push, Pakistan hosted 3.7 million Afghans, half of them children.

Afghan refugee attendance in Pakistani schools – including community schools and accelerated learning programmes – has long exceeded enrolments inside Afghanistan. In higher education, 41% of Afghan refugee university students studied at government universities in Pakistan as recently as 2022.

Now, that educational bridge appears to be weakening. Scholarship holders are stranded on both sides of the border. And students who once saw Pakistan as a place of opportunity now fear that each passing week puts their academic futures further out of reach.