By Solomon "Customs" Bridges
They came to Pakistan with paperwork in order and tuition covered, enrolled legally in medical programs meant to carry them to a degree. Now, according to reporting by Al Jazeera, a group of Afghan medical students says the government is moving to send them home before they finish.
The students told Al Jazeera they hold valid admission and funding, yet face expulsion regardless — a reversal that upends years of study and, for some, the difference between finishing a medical degree and abandoning it. One student's framing, as relayed in the reporting, was blunt: "We are not dolls to play with." Al Jazeera's report does not specify the exact government body ordering the removals or the precise numbers of students affected, and The American Times has not independently verified those details; readers should treat the scope of the policy as still coming into focus.
Pakistan has long hosted Afghan students and refugees, a relationship strained in recent years by mass deportation drives targeting undocumented Afghans following the Taliban's 2021 return to power. Legally enrolled students have generally been considered a separate case from that broader expulsion campaign — which is what makes this account notable. If legally admitted, funded students are now being swept toward the border regardless of status, it suggests Islamabad's tolerance for its Afghan guest population, students included, is narrowing further.
For Afghanistan, already short on trained doctors after years of war and brain drain, every medical student sent home before graduation is a credential lost and a clinic somewhere left wanting. The stakes here are not abstract diplomacy — they are stethoscopes that won't reach patients.
The American Times could not reach Pakistani officials for comment before publication; this story draws on a single outlet's account and should be read with that caveat in mind.
Nothing happens "over there" anymore.
— Compiled from reporting by Al Jazeera.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."