by Murtaza Shibli
The spectacle of a state turning its venom on the young and the vulnerable is always a tell-tale sign of a regime that has run out of arguments, legitimacy, and decency alike. Pakistan’s latest shame, however, plumbs the depths that even its most cynical observers might have thought unreachable. What unfolded in early September was not a bureaucratic misstep, nor a misunderstanding, nor a policy oversight. It was a deliberate act of cruelty-a state-sponsored humiliation of Afghan youth whose only “crime” was the pursuit of education.
On 1 September, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council issued a directive ordering Afghan students enrolled in medical and dental programmes across Pakistan to pack their bags and leave. The order was not an administrative adjustment; it was a calculated act of collective punishment. It forced dozens of students, including final-year MBBS candidates, to abandon years of hard work and flee the country under duress. At Lahore’s King Edward Medical University, 20 Afghan MBBS students, including seven in their final year, were given just 24 hours to complete departure formalities. At Fatima Jinnah Medical University, 21 Afghan women received the same ultimatum. In total, at least 43 students, 26 of them women, were ordered to leave the country from two of Pakistan’s premier institutions. The Afghan embassy in Islamabad called it what it was: forced deportation.
But this cruelty did not emerge in isolation. It is the logical endpoint of a systematic campaign of harassment, dispossession, and intimidation unleashed by Pakistan’s military establishment under a mentally retarded general who has since crowned himself a Field Marshal. Asim Munir—a man who has perfected the art of ruling through a civilian façade, a parliament worth less than a rubber stamp, while wielding the raw power of a junta has been unleashing his venom on Afghanistan because he has failed to gain any access to the land that was Pakistan military’s backyard playground for decades. As a result, Munir has presided over a relentless campaign against Afghan refugees, Afghan businesses, Afghan labourers, and now Afghan students.
The numbers are staggering. In 2026 alone, more than 146,000 Afghans have been deported. More than one million were deported in 2025. Between September 2023 and July 2026, more than 2.6 million were pushed back across the border. These figures represent families torn apart, livelihoods destroyed, and generations uprooted from the only homes they have ever known. Many deportees were born in Pakistan and had never set foot in Afghanistan. Their homes were bulldozed, their shops seized, and in many cases their savings looted. In Karachi, Peshawar, and Quetta, Afghan-owned bakeries, workshops, and small businesses were confiscated overnight, often handed to politically connected Pakistanis who profited from the misery of the poor. The expulsion of medical students is merely the latest obscenity in this sordid saga.
The human cost is impossible to ignore. A young Afghan woman, speaking to Arab News, captured the devastation succinctly: “For a medical or dental student, being forced to leave is not simply leaving a university. It means losing years of hard work, family investment, and the future of a young person.” For Afghan women, the order is a death sentence for their ambitions. The Taliban have barred women from universities and medical training. Sending these students back is not repatriation; it is the deliberate destruction of their futures. Human Rights Watch warned that the consequences would be “particularly severe” for Afghan women, who have “little prospect of continuing their studies.” Amnesty International called the decision “blatantly discriminatory and arbitrary.” Even the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan condemned the move as “a humanitarian crisis affecting young people whose education, safety and futures are at immediate risk.”
One might ask why Pakistan’s military establishment would commit such a self-defeating act of cruelty. The answer lies in the wreckage of Munir’s failed Afghanistan policy. After the Taliban takeover in 2021, Pakistan’s generals believed they had installed a pliant proxy in Kabul. They expected access to Afghan territory for cross-border terrorism, the continuation of smuggling networks, leverage over India, and even the possibility of selling strategic assets such as Bagram Air Base to the United States for money. Yes, earlier this year, Asim Munir promised Donald Trump, he could help him “get Bagram back”, of course, for a price or bakhshish. It was a desperate gambit, a signature move of a military that has long monetised geopolitical chaos. But the Taliban refused to play proxy. They refused to allow Pakistan to weaponise Afghan soil. They refused to be dictated to by Rawalpindi. The relationship soured, and Munir responded with the only language he had learnt as a Pakistani soldier: raw and unbridled violence.
To force Taliban compliance, Pakistan launched several deadly airstrikes inside Afghanistan, killing civilians, destroying homes, shops, and hospitals. Prior to this, Pakistan had already disrupted the lives of millions of Afghan refugees, bulldozed their homes and confiscating their businesses. The plan was simple: flood Afghanistan with millions of refugees to destabilise the Taliban government. It failed. Pakistan then turned to its favourite method: covert subversion. The ISI assembled a cohort of defeated insurgents—former Afghan military personnel, remnants of the Northern Alliance, and opportunistic warlords—hoping to create instability. This too failed. And now, having exhausted every tool of manipulation, Pakistan has turned on the most defenceless of targets: students who dared to dream of becoming doctors.
To understand the full scale of Pakistan’s moral collapse, consider additional incidents from the past two years. In Peshawar, Afghan schoolchildren were detained for hours because their parents lacked updated refugee cards. In Islamabad, Afghan cancer patients were denied chemotherapy at public hospitals unless they produced documents impossible to obtain. In Karachi, Afghan labourers were rounded up in night raids, beaten, and dumped at the border without their belongings. In Quetta, Afghan-owned pharmacies were shut down overnight, leaving entire neighbourhoods without access to medicine. In Lahore, Afghan university students were evicted from hostels at midnight, forced to sleep on pavements until embassy officials intervened. These incidents are not aberrations. They are the architecture of a policy built on cruelty.
The latest action of evicting students whose families have spent a fortune for their studies is seen as particularly gruesome and heartless, so much so that it has provoked reactions from Pakistan’s seasoned former diplomats. Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s former special representative for Afghanistan, described the expulsion as “shocking,” noting that it “concerns Pakistan’s own humanity, compassion and moral responsibility.” Ambassador Abdul Basit, another stalwart and a public commentator, asked the government to revisit its decision and called these expulsions and deportations contrary to the values and principles Pakistan stands for. Regardless of whether Pakistan has any values or principles as a state, when a country’s own diplomats must beg for basic decency, the rot is total.
Amid this darkness, a glimmer of hope has emerged from an unexpected quarter: India. India has reportedly offered admissions to these expelled students, allowing them to continue their studies without interruption. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations announced that it would accept 1,000 Afghan students for higher education, with scholarships covering fees, examination costs, and e-content. This is not merely humanitarian. It is strategic. It is moral. It is transformative. While Pakistan destroys the futures of Afghan doctors, India is building those futures. While Pakistan burns bridges, India is building them. The contrast could not be starker.
Pakistan’s dim-witted generals may believe they are punishing Afghanistan for its defiance but they are mistaken. They are punishing themselves. They are painting a portrait of a state that has lost its moral compass—a state that would rather destroy the dreams of young doctors than admit the failure of its own policies. The image of a 24-hour eviction notice handed to a final-year medical student will haunt Pakistan’s reputation for years. It is the image of a shameless country that has run out of ideas, out of legitimacy, and out of humanity. And it is an image the world let alone Afghans on both sides of the Durand Line will not soon forget.
Credit : countercurrents.org