KHYBER: About 28 Pakistani students, who were stranded in Afghanistan since closure of all borders on October 12, returned to Pakistan via Torkham border late on Monday evening.
Immigration officials at Torkham were called to their offices for procedural clearance of the travel documents of returning Pakistani students, who had arrived at the Afghan side of the border early on Monday morning after an official assurance by Islamabad about their return.
The returning students were, however, made to wait till evening as the Afghan immigration officials insisted on an official correspondence from Pakistan foreign and interior ministries, allowing them to complete the immigration process.
Immigration officials at Torkham refused to share any information about the arrived students, except that they would be allowed to go home after completion of their immigration process.
It could also not be ascertained from official quarters if the government officials had arranged for any transportation of the students or provision of any monetary assistance to them as most of them were cash-strapped.
Sources told Dawn that Pakistani embassy had earlier shared a list of 28 students with the Afghan immigration officials prior to their departure from Kabul in order to facilitate their smooth return.
They said that most of the students belonged to different cities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with at least 15 of them enrolled in the medical faculty of Spinghar University Kabul while the rest of them were studying in different medical institutions of Jalalabad, Khost and Paktia provinces of Afghanistan.
About 20 of those students had got admissions in Afghanistan in the year 2023 while five had gone in 2022 and the remaining were admitted in 2024 with all of them financing their education from their own resources, said sources.
Mudassir Shah Afridi, a Landi Kotal resident who is currently in Kabul, told this scribe by telephone that another batch of more Pakistani students also left Kabul for Jalalabad on Monday afternoon after they heard about the permission granted by the Pakistani authorities for their return.
He said that those, who left Kabul on Monday afternoon, stayed in Jalalabad for the night as they feared that Torkham border would be closed at night.
He said that visas of most of the Pakistani students, traders, transporters and labourers had expired while they were also in financial crises as they got stranded in different regions of Afghanistan after closure of borders on October 12 due to diplomatic tension between the two neighbouring countries.
Mr Afridi said that some Afghan and Pakistani philanthropists in Kabul had arranged for the travelling of majority of the returning Pakistanis, mostly students, who had exhausted all their financial resources during the three months of frustrating wait.
The issue of stranded Pakistani students surfaced only three weeks after the closure of border when local students, who had come to their homes from Afghanistan either on vacations or for renewal of their visas, contacted officials for paving the way for their return because most of them had their examination planned for early November with the Afghan authorities not ready to give them any relaxation.
Meanwhile, relatives of the stranded students and other Pakistani citizens have demanded of Torkham border authorities to keep the border crossing open till late on Tuesday (today) to facilitate the maximum number of the stranded persons to return.
Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2026
