"No place to call home": first Taliban, then Trump denies Afghans

KARACHI - First she fled the Taliban in fear of her life.

Next Najeeba Zaman - a pioneering journalist and talk show host - had to hide out at home in neighbouring Pakistan, under a new threat of deportation.

Then the U.S. president killed off her final hope of safety, choking off the refugee programme that Zaman had banked on to deliver her family to a new life free of threat and fear.

"Our deaths will be on the hands of the U.S. president. Please, deliver this message to him with every ounce of your voice," she told Context by phone from Islamabad.

A 45-year-old Afghan radio journalist, Zaman and her family have spent the last month lying low in their small, two-bed Islamabad apartment, fearing a knock on the door from Pakistani police doing the rounds.

Along with her husband, two sons and a daughter in law, Zaman crossed the Afghan border to Pakistan in March 2022 after the Taliban takeover in 2021 made her fear for her life and ended her 12-year career.

Since then, they have survived largely on savings and the hope of starting afresh in the United States.

Now, she fears detention and even deportation, as the Pakistani government has set a deadline for all Afghans to leave the capital and neighbouring Rawalpindi by March 31.

Zaman said the family may have to move hundreds of miles to stay in country but that Afghans were being asked to leave other cities, too, so she feared there was no safe Pakistani option.

"My younger son was taken by the police yesterday, although he has a valid visa," said Zaman, adding that her son was fined and his belongings briefly confiscated but that he was safe.

Forced removals of Afghans are causing what the United Nations calls "significant distress" and helping spread fear.

The U.N. said more than 800 Afghan nationals were deported from the two cities in January, with a further 930 despatched in the first half of February.

Human rights lawyer Moniza Kakar said expulsions were gathering pace.

“More than 2,500 Afghans have been detained although some have been released after paying a hefty fine, while over 40,000 forced to leave Pakistan, of which 28,000 from Islamabad and Rawalpindi, since the beginning of the year," Kakar said.

There are an estimated 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, a fifth of whom came after the Taliban seized power.

And for many like Zaman, the hope of relocating to the United States has died a painful death since news landed on Jan. 20 that newly re-elected President Donald Trump had halted the U.S. refugee programme and planned a wide, new travel ban.

This is the story of one woman who feels caught between three hostile governments and has no nation to call home:

"If I’m forced to return, I’ll likely be killed for reporting against the Taliban. Even in Pakistan, I’ve spoken out against them in interviews. As a radio broadcaster, I’m well known to them.

I was once respected, lived a life full of purpose where my voice mattered. Now, I’m a shadow of who I was. That vibrant life feels like a distant memory. I never imagined it could all disappear in an instant, or that I would one day be forced to leave the country I love and become a refugee.

For 12 years I worked in various radio channels ... I hosted a popular live show, six days a week, on women’s issues, educating and empowering them about their rights, health, and the economy.

I left that to join Radio Free Europe’s Radio Azadi, a branch of the U.S. government's Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's external broadcast services and my last job was at Sheba Radio, a private radio station.

After three and a half years of living in painful limbo, just as we were about to leave Islamabad and begin a new life in the U.S., everything has taken an unexpected turn.

In January, when the International Organization for Migration (IOM) called — the last time we heard from them — to tell us that the relocation process for the five of us had been finalised and we should start packing, I should have been overjoyed. They promised to send us our flight schedule soon.

Yet, somehow, that phone call didn’t bring the happiness I expected, despite it being the best news I had waited three years to hear. This was a couple of weeks before President Donald Trump signed an executive order, suspending refugee admissions programme.

Now I know why, we were never going to make it. Then when I heard that the Pakistan government has declared those not accepted for resettlement by the U.S., as ‘illegal’ immigrants and forcibly deported to Afghanistan, it was as if the ground had slipped from under my feet.

All of us, are in a state of depression. We don’t talk about what will happen to us. We know we don’t have enough money for all of us to get our Pakistan visas renewed to be able to stay, but we got visas renewed for our two sons. But I know that (even) people with valid visas have also been hauled up and deported. We have used up our entire savings, borrowed from friends and even taken a loan.

It now feels inevitable that we’ll have to return to Afghanistan if the Pakistani government doesn’t let us stay. I feel a deep anxiety just thinking about our journey back.

We have no home, no jobs, and all we hear from friends and family in Kabul is that there’s no work."

(Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths and Amruta Byatnal.)