KHYBER: Police arrested 12 undocumented Afghan nationals in the Landi Kotal on Thursday and deported eight of them to Afghanistan via the Torkham border crossing.

Officials told Dawn that warnings were issued to all Afghan nationals residing in different localities of Landi Kotal to either voluntarily return to Afghanistan or acquire legal travel documents as soon as possible.

They said Afghan traders and shopkeepers in Landi Kotal were also told to pack up their businesses and go back to their country.

The officials said that the crackdown was initiated on Thursday at the Landi Kotal Bazaar where officials of the district administration and police rounded up at least 12 Afghan shopkeepers and deported eight of them to Afghanistan via the Torkham border point.

They said those deported included Abu Bakar, Farman, Waris, Awozubillah, Nasaruddin, Adam Khan, Najeebullah and Hayat Mohammad.

The officials said that four Afghan nationals, including Mohammad Adnan, Yar Gul, Zahidullah and Abdur Rehman, had their cases pending with the Peshawar High Court, so they’re not deported.

They said for the first time, a crackdown was initiated on illegal Afghans in Landi Kotal tehsil of Khyber tribal district.

Earlier, local officials visited the areas where these Afghan families are residing and asked them to leave Pakistan, saying they’re under pressure from both the federal and provincial governments to persuade these illegal Afghan nationals to leave Pakistan at their earliest.

They said that authorities had already completed the mapping of all those Afghan families currently residing in different parts of Khyber.

The officials said efforts would be made to persuade Afghans to return in a dignified manner as they had been living here for a long time with some even illegally possessing Pakistani CNICs.

Sources in Landi Kotal Bazaar said that those arrested and later deported were residing and having businesses in Landi Kotal for the last three decades.

They said that Afghan traders had invested millions of rupees in different business enterprises over the years and it would be difficult for them to wind up their businesses in a short period of time.

Meanwhile, sources at Torkham said that Afghan authorities had refused to allow hundreds of Pakistanis stranded on their side of the border, with many students, women and children being among them.

They said that Pakistan allowed at least 28 medical students, enrolled in Afghan medical colleges, to return on January 12.

The sources said since then, around 1,000 more stranded Pakistani nationals had assembled at the Afghanistan side of Torkham border to come back to Pakistan as they got stuck in Afghanistan due to the closure of all border points on October 12.

Zahidan Khan, a resident of Landi Kotal who is among hundreds of the Pakistani nationals stranded in Afghanistan, told Dawn over the phone that he and many like him had made several contacts with the Pakistan Embassy in Kabul and Foreign Office in Islamabad for one-time renewal of expired visas, but to no avail.

He added that the Afghan authorities required that authorisation.

“As most stranded persons face both financial and health issues, the federal government should sympathetically look into their cases,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2026