KHYBER: The future of more than 300 students of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, currently enrolled at different medical institutions in Afghanistan, is at risk owing to continuous closure of Torkham border.

Most of these students, hailing from different districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have either come home on vacations or for taking back money for their next semesters.

The abrupt closure of borders with Afghanistan on October 12 owing to clashes between the border forces of Pakistan and Afghanistan caused their ‘unwilling’ stay at their homes with no clear information about any immediate restoration of cross-border movement.

Gul Shad Khan, a 4th-semester student at Rokhan Medical Institute in Jalalabad, told Dawn that he had come to Bara, his hometown, prior to closure of border to take back the required fee for his next semester and also to renew his visa.

PkSF asks govt to facilitate them to appear in exam

He said that he and hundreds of ‘stranded’ students of different medical institutions in Afghanistan were at risk of missing their planned examinations for promotion to next semester if they were not allowed to go to Afghanistan without further delay.

He said while they were impatiently awaiting resumption of cross-border movement, the higher education department of Afghanistan was not willing to provide them with an extension in their examination time.

He said that Afghan authorities conveyed to them in clear terms to appear in the examination on stipulated date with no relaxation for any one.

Sajid Ali, another 4th-semester student, told Dawn that most of Pakistani students, particularly from KP, were from middle and lower middle-class families and had to do part-time jobs at various hospitals in different cities of Afghanistan.

“We are confronted with a grave situation owing to closure of borders as our examinations are about to start. We are at risk of losing one full-year term if we could not appear in the examinations,” he said.

He said that their poor financial background also did not permit them to travel by air as air tickets were beyond their financial resources. He said that the visa type they were issued also required them to travel by road and not by air.

He said that the entire academic year of 5th and 6th semester students would be lost if they missed the examinations, which would confront them with both financial and mental stress.

Meanwhile, Pakhtun Students Federation has also expressed concerns over delay in reopening of border and denial of permission to local medical students to resume their studies in Afghanistan.

PkSF leader Abdul Wahab Afridi in a statement appealed to interior and foreign ministries to allow the stranded students to either go to Afghanistan by road or arrange for them a special aeroplane to take them to their respective cities for timely appearance in examinations.

Also, nearly 1,000 Pakistanis, who got stranded in Kabul and Jalalabad owing to closure of borders, appealed to the government of Pakistan to allow them to come to their homes.

In a telephonic contact with this scribe from Kabul, Fakhruddin Shinwari, a resident of Landi Kotal, said that they were not allowed to go back to Pakistan despite a relaxation given to stranded Afghan families in Pakistan.

He said that there were people among the stranded Pakistanis, who exhausted all their money while waiting for reopening of the border. He also demanded of the government to arrange for their immediate return as they could not afford further stay in Afghanistan.

Published in Dawn, November 5th, 2025