On 10 April, the Polish government organised the deportation of nine Afghan citizens to Afghanistan, despite the European Court of Human Rights having issued interim measures prior to their flight. Their lawyers managed to file an application in Strasbourg to halt the deportation. Six did not travel, but three were deported despite the Court’s decision. They departed on a military aircraft from Kraków to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, and from there on to Kabul. They were accompanied by 15 Polish border guards, a doctor, eight members of the air force and an independent observer.
"None of them had a criminal record in Poland, although the government is trying to claim that we are deporting criminals,” Polish lawyer Tomasz Sieniow, President of the Rule of Law Institute Foundation, and the observer on the flight, told El Confidencial by telephone. “They were simply refugees who were not recognised as such,” Sieniow stated.
Since March 2025, Poland has suspended the right to seek asylum for refugees arriving in the country via its border with Belarus. Afghans are one of the largest groups – second only to Syrians and Somalis – arriving at the Polish-Belarusian border, having crossed the Białowieża Forest. Some 1,400 Afghans did so between June 2022 and December 2026, according to the We Are Monitoring Association. They arrive “terrified, having gone without food for several days, some without shoes,” describes one of the foundation’s activists.
Frontex did not participate in the deportation of the three Afghans from Poland, “because it is illegal”, continues Sieniow, explaining that this is why the Polish government used a military aircraft. For their safety, he cannot give details of their backgrounds, but “they were three ordinary people”, he insists. “The most absurd thing is that they had been detained for seven or eight months without any proceedings taking place, because that would probably have constituted a violation of the European Convention”, he adds. Moreover, it would have been “very costly”.
A Frontex spokesperson told El Confidencial that the agency “resumed supporting member states' voluntary return operations to Afghanistan in November 2025”. According to Frontex data, "between then and the end of May, 52 people were returned voluntarily to Afghanistan with Frontex support."
The spokesperson also explained that “Frontex does not support forced returns to Afghanistan: Any voluntary returns we support are based on genuine and informed consent, with individuals receiving clear information about the situation on the ground.”
The Brussels meeting
Months earlier, on 30 August 2024, Germany deported 28 Afghans with criminal records and a further 81 Afghans on 18 July 2025, whilst Austria deported an Afghan man convicted of a crime on 21 October 2025, according to the European Asylum Agency. The EU is following suit.
Although no EU country recognises the Taliban government, the EU has maintained a minimal presence in Kabul since 2022, and after weeks of secrecy, on 12 May, a spokesperson for the European Commission confirmed in a briefing with journalists that, in coordination with the Swedish Ministry of Justice, they had sent a letter to the “de facto government of Afghanistan”, enquiring about the possibility of a meeting in Brussels.
‘Leaving Afghanistan was one of the hardest decisions of my life; I had to leave behind my parents, my siblings, my colleagues and everything I knew’ – Shafi Karimi
The Commission spokesperson admitted that this meeting would “follow-up a previous meeting”, which took place in January in Afghanistan, and in response to an initiative presented in October 2025 by 20 member states and Schengen area countries, which asked the Commission to coordinate these meetings to deport individuals who “pose a threat to security”.
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), together with more than 80 other organisations, has sent a letter to EU members warning that "the Taliban do not represent the people of Afghanistan, as they lack internal democratic legitimacy” and highlighting “arbitrary detentions, disappearances, executions, torture and reprisals” that are taking place in the country.
The only country where girls do not go to school
"We cannot allow them to sit down and talk with the Taliban; we have already seen what happened with the US’s peace negotiations in Qatar and how that turned out", journalist and feminist activist Khadija Amin tells El Confidencial. She refers to the agreement to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan after 20 years, ending in the return of the Taliban. “It frightens us and we don’t believe it is acceptable.”
Amin was a television presenter in her country when the Taliban regained control of Kabul on 15 August 2021. A week later, she managed to leave, with the help of the Spanish government and she is now a refugee in Spain. She left her children behind, because she is divorced and in Afghanistan women are not afforded custody.
"Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls can only study until they are 10 or 11,” Amin recalls. “There is gender apartheid and we want it to be recognised as a crime against humanity,” she continues. She says there are many cases of women who were deported from Pakistan to Afghanistan and went missing, and of soldiers who were killed. “Despite all that we know, Europe is now sitting down to talk with the Taliban; it seems wrong to me.”
“Despite the well-documented Taliban repression of human rights, many states – including Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Tajikistan, Germany and Austria – are calling for Afghans to be deported to a country where human rights violations, particularly against women, girls and dissident voices, are systematic,” Amnesty International warned in December.
Just 105,000 Afghans were evacuated during those two weeks in August, including journalists, translators, artists and military aides, along with their families and babies, who crowded together amid screams and shoving at Hamid Karzai International Airport. Those without connections or resources fled across land borders, mainly to Pakistan and Iran, where there are 2.2 million Afghan refugees, according to the United Nations.
‘Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls can only study until they are 10 or 11. There is gender apartheid and we want it to be recognised as a crime against humanity’ – Khadija Amin
“Leaving Afghanistan was one of the hardest decisions of my life; I had to leave behind my parents, my siblings, my colleagues and everything I knew,” admits journalist Shafi Karimi, a refugee in France and founder of Future Afghanistan, an independent news outlet in exile. He comes from the Charkh district, “an area that for years remained largely outside government control and was heavily influenced by the activities of the Taliban and ISIS”.
“The extremists singled out my wife and me as ‘non-believers’ for defending human rights,” he says. In November 2020, his friend and colleague Elyas Dayee, a journalist with Radio Azadi in Helmand, was killed by explosives planted in his vehicle, and this affected him “deeply”. In February 2021, with the support of the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Turkish embassy, he and his wife left Afghanistan. He says that if he were to return to Afghanistan today, under Taliban rule, he “could face arrest, persecution or imprisonment.”
Is it safe to return to Afghanistan?
“Safety means different things; there are people there who aren’t allowed to do anything, simply because they are Hazara or Shia,” recalls Ali Ghulami, a 38-year-old Afghan of Hazara and Shia ethnicity, who arrived in Greece in 2024 with his family, where he was granted asylum.
He says things are not as portrayed by the propaganda on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, featuring some influencers who have travelled there and claim that “the Taliban have changed”. “They use images of foreign tourists because they know they cannot kill or arrest them, as that would create serious political problems for them.”
In Greece, statistics also show that the legal landscape for Afghan asylum seekers is changing. The drop from almost universal acceptance (97%) to 86% acceptance on merit suggests a “tightening of policies”, explains Vicky Aggelidou, a lawyer with the organisation Legal Centre Lesvos (LCL). In recent weeks, several asylum applications from Afghan men on Lesbos have been rejected. This applies both to men who arrived alone and to those who are here with their families, according to an LCL report.
Meanwhile, Polish lawyer Tomasz Sieniow says that, following the departure of the flight carrying the Afghans from Poland, they received information that the Taliban had not allowed them to enter the country; they were detained, returned to Uzbekistan, and then, once again, went on to Kabul, in an operation that lasted 10 days. Sieniow says that if national governments agree to maintain relations with the Taliban’s diplomatic missions, “they will not be respecting their own positions”.
👉 Original article on El Confidencial
🤝 This article is part of the PULSE Europe collaborative project. Paulina Nodzyńska (Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland), Dimitris Angelidis (Efsyn, Greece), Gian Paolo Accardo (Voxeurop, France) and György Folk (HVG, Hungary) have contributed to it.
Do you like our work?
Help multilingual European journalism to thrive, without ads or paywalls. Your one-off or regular support will keep our newsroom independent. Thank you!