‘Not dolls to play with’: Afghan medical students face Pakistan expulsion

What the report says

Al Jazeera reports that Afghan medical students enrolled at Pakistani universities are facing expulsion orders that could force them to leave mid-degree. The students say they were admitted legally, many through an Allama Iqbal Scholarship run by Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission and the Pakistani embassy in Kabul, and that they were never told they also needed separate registration with the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC). Several students interviewed said they only learned of the directive through notices and social media posts, with some given just days or even hours to vacate hostels and stop attending classes and hospital shifts.

The PMDC said on September 1 that foreign medical and dental students must be registered with the regulator, and that only 22 Afghan students were currently registered. Al Jazeera says the order affects more than 200 Afghan students across Pakistan, including women who described studying medicine in Pakistan as their only path to higher education after the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in 2021 and its later restrictions on women’s education.

Students said universities handled earlier registration steps and that the PMDC issue was never raised when they enrolled. They argued the decision is especially damaging for final-year students who are close to graduating and for those whose studies were already disrupted in Afghanistan. The report places the move within Pakistan’s broader repatriation campaign against Afghan nationals, which has intensified amid strained relations between Islamabad and Kabul.