Smartly dressed and softly spoken, Mohammed Reza Sazish, 26, tries hard not to be noticed on the rare occasions he leaves the apartment he’s renting in the outskirts of Islamabad. A civil rights activist who fled to Pakistan from Afghanistan, he fears being caught up in a mass deportation drive that has seen close to 200,000 Afghans pushed out of the country in the past six weeks. For Sazish, being forced back to Afghanistan could be a matter of life and death. In November 2022, he, along with several other activists, was arrested and jailed by the country’s Taliban government for attending the inauguration of a new women’s rights organisation. “Sometimes I have nightmares about Afghanistan and the torture I experienced,” he tells me. “I wake up suddenly, frightened, worried I might be deported.” Millions of Afghans have been living in Pakistan for decades, the first major wave arriving after the beginning of the Afghan-Soviet war in 1979. Now, however, citing economic pressures and security concerns, the Pakistani government has ordered many to return, even those who were born and raised in Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands were deported or pushed by fear of arrest to return to Afghanistan in a campaign that began in October 2023. A second wave got underway last month, with Pakistani authorities newly revoking the temporary resident permits of around 800,000 Afghans. At the Torkham border crossing, families have loaded intricately painted Pakistani trucks with whatever possessions they’ve managed to fit in, as they return to a homeland some have never set foot in before. Under the Taliban, the country where they’ll begin to rebuild their lives bars girls from studying beyond primary school age and women from working in most jobs. In theory, Sazish, shouldn’t be affected by the deportation campaign. He came to Pakistan after eventually being released from jail by the Taliban, and holds a valid Pakistani visa. But he has to renew it each month. It’s expensive and crucially leaves him in nervous periods of limbo for weeks – awaiting an extension that may or may not arrive, in which time he could be swept up in the frequent raids Pakistani police carry out searching for undocumented Afghans. A few months ago, they arrived at his door. He says: “I was scared and thinking we have done nothing wrong, why have they come? His visa had already been extended that month, but he hadn’t printed a copy out and so he was taken away to a transit camp for deportees. “I was showing my documents, but they weren’t checking them or listening to what I was saying.” Sazish managed to negotiate his release, he says, with the help of a bribe paid to the police, but now his anxiety swells anytime he hears a rap on the door. There are many other Afghans in a similar position to Sazish in Pakistan, all of them hoping to be relocated abroad. But western countries are now accepting far fewer Afghan refugees than they were immediately after the Taliban takeover in August 2021. “Sometimes I have nightmares about Afghanistan and the torture I experienced. I wake up suddenly, frightened, worried I might be deported.” – Mohammed Reza Sazish Under President Trump, the US has suspended its refugee admission programme, and despite the clear risks he faces, Sazish is yet to receive a positive response to his frequent enquiries to human rights groups and foreign embassies. “Night and day I am sending emails,” he says. “The first thing I ask whenever I meet anybody is can you give me the email address of any organization or country that can help me?” With international attention now focused elsewhere, Sazish and other Afghan human rights defenders feel abandoned. “We are not just forgotten, but totally forgotten,” he says bitterly. “Here in Pakistan we are not living, just surviving.” A poem he’s written captures the despair he feels: “The train arrived, halted with a howl, it offered its respects to the weary and waiting sunset The man picked up his suitcase of sorrow and climbed aboard, the train compartment was overtaken by a serene silence Before he turned away, he wrote: “Jihad. War…” — then spat on the words he had scrawled When he fell asleep and closed his eyes, all the people vanished, he saw a soothing light In his bright dream, he danced and clapped, a girl offered him wine and honey When he woke, black blood covered the train as it crashed, he was bewildered and confused, wondering how this new disaster had befallen him” Watch more here: England-Afghanistan cricket match to go ahead despite calls for boycott Afghan Women’s Summit – an act of defiance in itself What is the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan two years after Taliban takeover?