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For decades, home for Khoja Gul was a bustling plastic scrap warehouse in Pakistan. He had built a life there from the ground up—raising eight children, achieving financial stability, and carving out a sense of peace far from the volatile borders of his youth.
Then, geopolitical tectonic plates shifted. As diplomatic ties between Islamabad and Kabul soured, Pakistan executed its Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan, plunging millions of undocumented Afghans into immediate precarity.
Just like that, Gul’s life collapsed. Forced across the border, he now lives squeezed into a fragile shanty in Kabul alongside his family of ten.
"I have no job. No money," Gul says, his voice carrying the exhaustion of a man stripped of his livelihood overnight. "I barely manage to pay rent for my family. I have nothing."
Gul’s story is not an isolated tragedy; it is a microcosm of a massive humanitarian crisis. Since late 2023, more than five million Afghans—roughly 10% of the entire population—have been forced back into Afghanistan. In 2025 alone, nearly three million returnees streamed across the borders, with two-thirds fleeing escalating hostilities in Iran and one-third expelled from Pakistan.
But as millions are discovering, returning to a homeland is not the same as returning to stability. Instead, these mass repatriations have forced millions into a deadly trap where the ghosts of past conflict collide violently with the immediate horrors of climate change.
A Fatal Confluence: Four Decades of War Meets Climatic Extremes
For those crossing the Durand Line, the tragedy is layered. They are returning to a nation structurally hollowed out by forty years of armed conflict, only to find it is now one of the most climate-vulnerable places on Earth.
Upon arrival, Gul and his family were instantly greeted by a brutal winter so unforgiving it claimed 61 lives in just three days.
"We suffered in the rains," Gul recalls. "We did not even have bedding or blankets. It was only our gawandi (neighbour) who gave us some out of kindness."
According to Hafiz Abdul Qadeem Abrar, spokesperson for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) Afghanistan, this intersection of war and weather is devastating. The violence of systemic poverty and political displacement is now being amplified by "frost waves, floods, and expected heatwaves in the summer."
The sheer scale of the influx has overwhelmed local and international aid agencies. While the IRC and the de facto government provide initial medical checkups, temporary shelter, and climate-survival training at border camps like Torkham, the sheer volume of people forces authorities to quickly send families back to their native provinces.
"No matter how much is done, it is never enough," Abrar warns. "Women and children suffer the most; they are lost without a home."
The Trap of Triple Displacement
What awaits these families in the provinces is a landscape shattered by compounding disasters. Prolonged droughts, severe earthquakes, and unpredictable flash floods have triggered a massive internal displacement crisis.
Maisam Shafiey, advocacy manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Afghanistan, highlights the geographic desperation: thousands in Badghis province have abandoned dried-up agricultural lands to flee to Herat, while last year's devastating earthquake in eastern Afghanistan left thousands more living in squalid, informal settlements.
Shockingly, these natural disasters are hitting the exact same areas where recent border returnees are trying to resettle. Charlie Goodlake, head of external relations for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), notes that many families are now trapped in a vicious cycle of triple displacement:
Phase Path of Displacement Drivers
First Flight from Afghanistan → Pakistan / Iran Historic armed conflict and political instability
Second Forced Repatriation → Afghan Border / Native Provinces Policy crackdowns and regional hostilities
Third Internal Flight → Informal Settlements / Urban Slums Earthquakes, severe frost, and crop-killing droughts
"The people who need assistance are simply too many," Goodlake points out, estimating that civil society can barely cover a quarter of those in dire need.
Strangers in Their Own Homeland
For a significant portion of the returnees, the psychological toll is as severe as the environmental one. Many were not even born in Afghanistan; they are returning to a country they know only through the nostalgia and trauma of their parents.
Shahtaj (name changed) was born in Pakistan after his parents fled Afghanistan in the late 1970s. He grew up bearing the distinct, heavy burden of the second-generation refugee.
"No matter how long you live in another country, you are still seen as an alien, a foreigner," Shahtaj reflects. Yet, stepping onto Afghan soil brought no relief. "Coming to a country where I had never lived before, everything seemed new and different. Although Afghanistan was my homeland by origin, in practical terms, it was still unfamiliar to me."
This profound sense of estrangement is exacerbated by the physical vulnerability of temporary living. Maria Patel, founder of TheDisplacement.com, documented the conditions of refugees in Karachi before they were cleared out. They endured suffocating heatwaves with no electricity and watched open drainage systems overflow during torrential rains, drowning tents and endangering children.
Yet, even facing those conditions, refugees dreaded returning. "They feared that upon their return to Afghanistan, they would have to live in camps, in unknown terrain, and wondered how they would navigate such climatic conditions," Patel says.
For some, the risk is too high to take. Dr. Maryam (name changed), a highly respected 50-something gynaecologist who fled Kabul when the Taliban regained control, chose to stay undocumented in Pakistan. Despite losing her career and living with just USD 100 in valuables, she prioritizes basic survival. "For a woman, her home is everything. But I am happy in Pakistan. At least I am safe here," she says.
As a physician, she knows too well what awaits pregnant women and newborns in the resource-starved camps across the border, where severe weather acts as a silent executioner.
A Forgotten Crisis on the Global Stage
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) projected that human assistance needs in Afghanistan would skyrocket to 22 million people in 2026. Yet, international funding has slowed to a crawl. In 2025, only 41.7% of the pledged funding for the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) was actually delivered.
Aid workers and political analysts point out that the world's eyes have largely drifted away from Central Asia. Imran Khan, former country director of the US Institute of Peace, notes that burgeoning international conflicts—such as the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the direct military escalations between Iran, the US, and Israel—have completely occupied the bandwidth of Western policymakers. Furthermore, shifts in global political leadership have severely weakened international commitments to the climate change agenda.
"In Washington DC or London or Geneva, policymakers must not have the time to come up with ideas for Afghan refugees," Khan remarks bluntly.
This global apathy leaves Pakistan with very little economic incentive to host millions of refugees. Khan explains that Islamabad's calculus shifted drastically after 2023, driven by accusations that the government in Kabul has failed to prevent cross-border actions against Pakistani security forces and civilians. "Pakistan has little support or incentive to keep hosting millions of Afghans, other than a moral imperative," he concludes.
The Cycle Continues
As international funding dries up and the climate grows harsher, the fundamental concept of "home" continues to disintegrate for millions of Afghans.
For Shahtaj, standing in the unfamiliar streets of Kabul, the future looks bleakly familiar. He is already contemplating uprooting his family to become a climate and conflict migrant for a third time—even though he knows the steep cultural price of perpetual flight.
"Migration will lead to our cultural erosion," he laments. "Second or third-generation migrants grow up with a weaker connection to our customs, our ways of life, our languages. I had hoped that this cycle would end with us."
He pauses, looking out at a country teetering between an unforgiving summer and an uncertain political future. "But there are times when it feels inevitable, because Afghanistan’s trials are not over yet."
For global humanitarian agencies, the mandate is clear but daunting: without immediate, scaled-up international intervention, the mass return of millions of Afghans will not be a milestone of historical healing, but rather the ignition of yet another catastrophic cycle of displacement.
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
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