--- title: "Fleeing home again" date: "2026-09-15T00:01:00+01:00" modified: "2026-09-03T11:55:54+01:00" url: "https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/fleeing-home-again/" post_id: 10884 --- # Fleeing home again ![](https://newhumanist.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_4149-1200x675.jpg)The aftermath of a strikeI come from a village in Pakistan, on the border with Afghanistan. Located high in the mountains, over 1,000 metres above sea level, the region has long been a junction for trade and cultural exchange, but also for conflict and military campaigns. As I look back at my childhood, my memories are of violence hanging over my land. My school was destroyed twice by the militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban. My family had to flee from the border many times, leaving everything behind. Each time we returned to our village, there was more destruction. Still, we always hoped for peace. But since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, the conflict has deepened. Now I can see that the security situation is becoming increasingly fragile, rather than improving. Despite severe casualties among civilians and soldiers, Pakistan and Afghanistan have vowed to keep fighting – even as communities on both sides of the border suffer. This summer, as the violence escalated, I travelled along the border to talk to others living near this volatile line. A forgotten conflict -------------------- The latest tensions began with the Islamabad government alleging that Afghanistan has become a “a base of operations for terrorism in Pakistan”, sheltering the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups that have launched multiple deadly attacks inside the country. Afghanistan’s government denies this, but Islamabad still carried out an airstrike. That was in October 2025. Since then, there have been numerous military operations, airstrikes and artillery exchanges. Afghanistan in particular is already squeezed by crisis, with nearly half the population in need of humanitarian assistance. Until last year, Pakistan was its largest trade partner, providing essential supplies of food, fuel and medicines. Now, trading is mostly suspended, and border crossings are closed. And the strikes continue. I spoke to Nazakat Khan, a 40-year-old father of 10, who lives on the Afghan side of the border, in Nangarhar Province, where he farms the land with his family. In February, during a Pakistani airstrike, he lost 17 members of his family – including six children, his father, his brother and sister-in-law, as well as his brother’s children. > Our village was directly hit and three of my cousins were injured Khan is now struggling to piece together the fragments of a life that was once full. Every day, he tells me, he suffers when he recalls how his entire world came crashing down in one moment. He has an 8-year-old child who survived but is recovering from injuries from the strike, and seeking medical care means travelling to a nearby city or even all the way to the capital, Kabul. He says that he struggles to pay the fees, and that he is left emotionally drained by his grief and the ongoing need to survive and take care of his son. Khan tells me that the spotlight on the border conflict was fleeting – just three or four days of coverage on social and national media in Afghanistan, a few international outlets reporting, and then silence. “A lot of people came after the airstrike, promising to help me and my family with relief, support and justice. And then they gradually went away, just like the smoke from an explosion.” The night we fled ------------------ Part of the problem is that other conflicts are grabbing the headlines, especially in the west. The war in the Middle East has more immediate effects on the global economy, and the Russia–Ukraine war is on European soil. But if the international community ignores what is happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it could lead to increased militant activity along both sides of the border – with more deaths, more people displaced, greater instability and disrupted trade in a region located at a strategic juncture of south and central Asia. Data is hard to come by, but the United Nations reported in March that more than 100,000 individuals had been displaced by the conflict – primarily in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces, where tens of thousands of people are now staying with relatives, in makeshift camps or in rented accommodation. There have been fewer displacements in Pakistan, but many people have still had to leave their homes, some moving to nearby towns or to the city of Peshawar. In March, I also had to leave for Peshawar for a month, along with the others from my village. We had seen the crisis coming. First, the army set up a base near our village that was used to attack targets in Afghanistan. We heard the sound of crossfire almost every night. We asked the authorities if we could leave if the situation was getting worse, but we were told that there was no need. Then, on 2nd March, a night of unbearable gunfire, our village was directly hit. Three of my cousins were injured, and in that terrifying moment, we had no choice but to flee, barely escaping with the clothes on our backs. Others living on a stretch of 500 kilometres between the border towns of Torkham and Chaman have also fled their homes as a result of shelling. When tensions rose in February, more than 1,500 people were forced to take refuge in a railway tunnel built during the British occupation. The tunnel was originally constructed to cross the Khyber Pass and has long served as a refuge for locals during periods of border tension. While it offers some safety, it is severely lacking in basic amenities, including water. A complex history ----------------- To end the conflict, the world must understand the complicated history between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the 1990s, Pakistan had a close relationship with the Afghan Taliban, and was one of only three countries that formally recognised the Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001, providing military, political and logistical support to the movement during that time. This changed with the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when Pakistan became an official supporter of the campaign to defeat the Taliban. However, both the US government and Nato have accused Pakistan of continuing to provide support and sanctuary to the leaders of the group. Following the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, Pakistan initially showed support for the return of the Taliban. But many experts and political activists note that tensions between the two countries escalated when the new Taliban government did not act in line with Pakistan’s expectations. Some say that Pakistan expected to indirectly manage Afghanistan’s relationship with the rest of the world. When this dynamic failed to materialise, its approach shifted. > Hundreds were killed in an airstrike on a drug rehab centre in Kabul Then came the killings. The first reported instances of Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan territory occurred in 2022, resulting in the deaths of at least 47 people. A cycle of retaliatory attacks ensued, each one claiming lives or devastating local communities. In 2025, the violence began to ramp up, accompanied by ongoing border closures that are estimated to be costing Pakistani exporters $177 million each month. The lives and livelihoods of communities on both sides of the border have been disrupted, as many people relied on crossing back and forth for work, business, health care, education and to visit family. Civilian casualties are mounting. In March 2026, a Pakistani airstrike hit a hospital that served as a drug rehab centre in Kabul. The UN estimates that more than 269 people were killed, while the Afghan Taliban puts the toll at more than 400. It marked a significant escalation in the violence. Eyewitness accounts described a horrifying scene in which the building filled with fire, patients found themselves trapped and families were left searching for news of their loved ones at mass burial sites. Pakistan claims that it did not hit the hospital and instead hit military installations in Kabul and Nangarhar. In April, a fragile ceasefire was settled between the countries with help from China, which led diplomatic discussions. But it didn’t last. Within a month, the Afghan government accused Pakistan of resuming airstrikes, with a hit on Kunar University killing at least seven people and injuring 75 others, including students and a professor. Pakistan again denied hitting civilian targets. As I write, the strikes continue. Pakistan claimed it killed 29 militants in a strike on June 28th. The United Nations, however, confirmed at least 28 civilian deaths. The real causes --------------- Some high-profile figures are trying to raise awareness in the international community. I talked to Najib Azad, who served as press secretary for former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani. He has lived in the US since the Taliban takeover, but closely follows the situation in the region. Azad has submitted a communication to the International Criminal Court for preliminary review against Pakistan for the bombardment of civilians. He sees the latest strikes as part of an ongoing strategy that extends beyond the defence against terrorism. “I believe Pakistan’s military establishment does not simply defend national borders – it has become one of the dominant forces shaping \[Afghanistan’s\] strategic direction,” Azad told me. He says that Pakistan’s military establishment has spent decades attempting to turn Afghanistan into a managed battlefield: an arena to be influenced, pressured and periodically destabilised in order to prevent the emergence of a fully sovereign Afghan state. This, he believes, is intended to make Pakistan, and its management of Afghanistan, indispensable to external powers, including the US. ![](https://newhumanist.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/pic7-edited-1.jpeg)The old railway tunnel where hundreds of people have sheltered. Credit: Jamaima AfridiAzad points to the timings around the attacks. For example, on 30th September 2025, US President Trump publicly praised Pakistan’s leadership after meeting the prime minister and army chief at the White House, describing them as “incredible” and saying they supported his so-called peace plan in Gaza “100 per cent”. Shortly afterward, Pakistan launched military operations including overnight airstrikes in Kabul and Paktika. Timing alone does not prove causation. But when political praise, diplomatic legitimacy and military escalation repeatedly appear close together, those patterns deserve to be examined. “Pakistan’s international involvement then means renewed political support, security cooperation and financial assistance,” Azad says. “That, in my view, has been one of Pakistan’s broader strategic approaches in recent years.” The Pakistani government would deny this. They present their strikes as “counterterrorism”, executed with “precision and accuracy” against militant attacks. Minister of Information Attaullah Tarar posted recently on X that these military actions include the “selective targeting of camps and hideouts”. There has certainly been an increase in violence in Pakistan since the return of the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2021. Direct engagements between the Pakistani Security Forces and the Pakistani Taliban rose from 98 incidents in 2021 to 470 in 2024. Meanwhile, terror incidents in 2025 surged by 29 per cent from the previous year. But if Pakistan’s concerns about Afghanistan’s involvement in attacks on its territory are true, some point out that its military strategy is not proving effective in stopping them. And amid the two nations’ manoeuvres, strikes continue to kill and injure a large number of innocent people. Civilians caught in the crossfire --------------------------------- As Jamila Gillani, a Pakistani politician from the progressive National Democratic Movement, said, “Supposedly there has been conflict between Pakistan and the Taliban; however, in reality it is local communities that are suffering the most. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, these people are the ones facing the consequences of this conflict by being killed, injured or displaced.” At root, Gillani told me, this conflict is not about terrorism, or domestic issues in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but about international power plays – and the local population is caught in the middle. There is economic damage, too. The border regions have particularly high poverty levels, and when crossings cease, locals experience immediate drops in income. I talked to Parekhtaja, a 37-year-old mother of five from a remote village near Torkham, on the Pakistani side of the border. She has three children with disabilities and her husband’s wage work at the border – carrying baggage across and doing other loading and unloading work – has been badly affected by the closures. Like the other families in their village, when the crossfire worsened earlier this year, Parekhtaja and her family were forced to shelter at night in the railway tunnels to avoid heavy shelling. “We could not leave the village because we had no money, and therefore we had to hide in the railway tunnels, which were dark and had been built many years ago,” she told me. This was during the festival of Ramadan. “We avoided drinking, because there were no restrooms for women, and unlike men who could somehow find a spot outside, we couldn’t use any place because of our Parda \[the cultural and religious practice around secluding women from the public eye\], so we all had to wait until morning to get back to our homes to use restrooms.” Parekhtaja ended up with a urinary tract infection. The family is struggling to buy enough food to eat, and they definitely couldn’t afford to go to the hospital. With the world’s attention elsewhere, Azad worries about the spiralling effects of long-term conflict. “Ultimately, my concern is not only about Afghanistan. I worry about a broader regional cycle in which instability becomes normalised, sovereignty becomes conditional, and civilian populations continue paying the highest price.” Parekhtaja doesn’t see any benefit to the never-ending fighting, for people in Pakistan or for communities in Afghanistan. “We are the ones who suffer most,” she said. “People from both sides of the border are the same. We have family, friends and work connections on both sides of the border. Both countries should stop fighting and let us live in peace.”