Forgetting all our promises

Forgetting all our promisesLynne O'Donnell We were full of sympathy for journalists who fled their country as the Taliban returned to power.Now many of them are being sent homeJournalists from Afghanistan who fled to Pakistan to escape detainment, imprisonment, torture, and worse by the totalitarian Taliban regime are living with the fear that they may be deported, as Pakistani authorities round up Afghans to send back over the border.Hundreds of journalists were forced into hiding when the anti-freedom Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021.Many who fled across the eastern border to Pakistan have been living in increasingly desperate conditions.They've mostly been unable to work, and so housing, healthcare for their families, education for their children, and visas that would enable them to stay have become unaffordable.The almost unbearable stress of destitution, homelessness and the high chance of imprisonment if caught in regular police sweeps with expired documentation is now compounded by concerns that -in common with former rights advocates, defence forces and police personnel, political activists and women -they might be sent back to the very dangers they fled in the first place.For some, that nightmare has already come true.Pakistan announced months ago that 1.7 million undocumented people from Afghanistan, some of whom have been living in the country for decades, would be sent back over the border for the Taliban to deal with.Deportations began on November 1, and around half a million have reportedly already been expelled since then, amid reports that they've been strictly limited in the amount of money and personal property they can take with them.