By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s medical regulator has ordered thousands of Afghan nationals studying at medical and dental colleges across the country to return home, in one of the most far-reaching measures yet in Islamabad’s escalating campaign against Afghan citizens living within its borders.
The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council wrote to public and private institutions nationwide earlier this month instructing them to complete the paperwork necessary to send Afghan students back to Afghanistan. The directive, dated 1 September, also bars colleges from admitting any new Afghan students for the current academic year.
The order marks a striking escalation. Where previous rounds of Pakistan’s deportation drive have targeted undocumented migrants and refugees, this is the first to reach students formally enrolled in professional degree programmes — some of them, presumably, only months from qualifying as doctors.
“Afghan nationals previously enrolled in medical or dental programs in Pakistan are required to return to Afghanistan, in accordance with the prevailing policy directions,” the council said in the letter. It instructed institutions to ensure “all necessary administrative formalities, including issuance of requisite NOCs and facilitation of their departure are completed, accordingly” — a reference to the no-objection certificates students will need to leave.
No new admissions, transfers or “other facilitation” of Afghan nationals would be permitted this academic session “until further orders,” the regulator said, adding: “The matter is of highest priority and relates to national policy directives.”
The letter gave no indication of how many students would be affected, nor whether any exemption might be made for those close to finishing their degrees.
Confusion on the ground
The directive follows an earlier instruction issued on 31 July, and comes after unverified reports began circulating on social media of Afghan nationals being expelled from public medical colleges in Lahore.
A health ministry official said an “in principle” decision had been taken to send Afghan medical students home, attributing the move to the deteriorating relationship between Islamabad and Kabul. Universities, the official said, had been asked to establish exactly how many Afghan nationals were enrolled and in which years of study.
The council believed it already held records on most Afghan medical students, the official added, though he acknowledged “there remained a possibility that some may have been missed or mistakenly identified as nationals of other countries or as locals.” Once the data had been gathered, lists would be passed to “the concerned quarters,” who would decide what happened next. He was clear that the measure applied only to Afghan nationals, not students of any other nationality.
The vice-chancellor of one medical university confirmed his institution had received the council’s instructions and had begun compiling details of its Afghan students, in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes alike. “Although we were directed to provide the data, we were not told why such action was being taken,” he said.
Asked about the reports of expulsions, foreign ministry spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan pointed to Pakistan’s existing removals framework. “As per the Illegal Foreigner Repatriation Plan, stay of any foreign national without a valid visa and passport is illegal, and the concerned individual is liable to deportation,” he told Dawn newspaper, adding that visa extension applications from Afghan students continued to be processed “in line with our existing policy, rules and regulations.”
A drive that has gathered pace
The order lands amid a repatriation campaign that has been building since late 2023, when Pakistan launched what it called the Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan after attributing 14 of the 24 suicide bombings recorded that year to Afghan nationals. The great majority of those targeted by the plan have been Afghans.
That drive was renewed with particular force in April last year, when hundreds of thousands of residence permits held by Afghans were rescinded and holders warned they faced arrest if they did not leave. In June, the interior ministry went further, directing that any Afghan national found in Pakistan without a valid visa be arrested with effect from 10 July.
The scale of the exodus has been considerable. More than 2.6 million Afghans left Pakistan for Afghanistan between September 2023 and the end of July this year, according to the International Organization for Migration. A Senate committee was told last month that Pakistan deported 1,155,221 Afghan nationals during 2025 alone, in figures presented by senior officials from the interior ministry and the Chief Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees.
Pakistan has consistently framed the removals as a matter of national security, arguing that militant groups — chiefly the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — operate from sanctuaries across the border in Afghanistan. The Taliban government in Kabul denies that Afghan soil is being used to stage attacks on Pakistan. The United Nations and human rights organisations have repeatedly voiced concern over the manner of the returns, warning that some of the most vulnerable Afghans are being forced back with little notice.
Relations between the two neighbours, never straightforward, deteriorated sharply last October, when cross-border clashes killed dozens in some of the worst fighting between the countries in years. A ceasefire brokered by Qatar and Turkey brought the violence to a halt, but subsequent peace talks failed to settle the underlying dispute, and sporadic clashes and border closures have continued since.
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