Forced to Leave, Unsure Where to Belong

Torkham, Afghanistan, 18 June – At IOM’s reception centre near the Torkham border, families arrive in waves – coated in dust, tired, anxious, and unsure of what’s next. Among them is Nasrin*, a mother gently pushing her husband’s wheelchair, with her two daughters by her side. After spending most of her life in Pakistan, Nasrin is back in Afghanistan – not by choice, but because she was forced to.

“I had to leave everything behind,” she says. “I worked so hard to build a life, but in the end, I couldn’t bring any of it with me.”

Nasrin, now 40, fled conflict in Afghanistan with her family as a child in the 1990s, hoping to find safety in Pakistan. Life there was never easy: “My mother struggled so much,” she recalls. “We were poor and often hungry, but at least we were alive. Fear had driven us to leave Afghanistan.”

Years later, when she was 20, Nasrin married Habib Gul*. They settled in a small village in Punjab, Pakistan, and opened a bakery together. Their daughters went to school, and for the first time, the family had hope for a better future.

“We never wanted our daughters to suffer like we did,” Nasrin says. “We wanted them to be educated, to have options.”

Nasrin arrives at the Torkham border with her husband and their two children, following their return from Pakistan. Photo: IOM/Mina Nazari

But their peace did not last. One day, Habib suffered a seizure that left him paralyzed. Nasrin suddenly had to support the entire family on her own.

“I asked some Afghan men I knew to help me keep the bakery running,” she explains. She managed to pay rent, cover her husband’s medical bills, and keep her daughters in school for a while.

However, even that fragile sense of normalcy didn’t last long. As undocumented Afghans, the family began to experience increasing pressure from local authorities. Living in a village in Punjab, they were subject to frequent inspections and persistent uncertainty.

“The police would often come by and tell us to leave,” Nasrin says. Eventually, without notice and no time to prepare, authorities transported Nasrin, her husband, and their two daughters to the Torkham border, from where they were forcibly returned, leaving behind their belongings, their home, and the life they had worked so hard to build.

Arriving at the IOM reception centre at the Torkham border, Nasrin felt overwhelmed. Her daughters had never even been to Afghanistan before.