{"id":76552,"date":"2026-03-03T16:00:33","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T07:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2026\/mar\/03\/afghan-refugees-fear-pakistan-arrest-deport-taliban-war"},"modified":"2026-03-03T16:00:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T07:00:33","slug":"now-they-only-deport-afghans-trapped-in-pakistan-arrested-and-sent-back-after-open-war-breaks-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76552","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Now they only deport\u2019: Afghans trapped in Pakistan arrested and sent back after \u2018open war\u2019 breaks out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Journalists and activists who fled Taliban rule are living in fear as Pakistani police hunt and deport refugees after escalating cross-border clashes<\/p>\n<p>At midnight on Saturday, Alma* stood at the check-in counter at Karachi airport in Pakistan with her husband and three-year-old son, holding tickets she believed would finally take the refugee family to safety.<\/p>\n<p>The Afghan journalist, who fled the Taliban in October 2024, had already been stopped from boarding two days earlier, on 26 February. Since they were flying with a tourist visa to a country in Africa, they had booked a flight from Karachi with a return leg that they did not plan to use. But the Pakistani officials at the airport refused to let them board.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2026\/mar\/03\/afghan-refugees-fear-pakistan-arrest-deport-taliban-war\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Journalists and activists who fled Taliban rule are living in fear as Pakistani police hunt and deport refugees after escalating cross-border clashesAt midnight on Saturday, Alma* stood at the check-in counter at Karachi airport in Pakistan with her hu&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,87,640,60,494,61,44,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-conflict-and-arms","category-migration-and-development","category-pakistan","category-refugees","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76553,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76552\/revisions\/76553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}