Afghan Asylum Seeker Appeals to Australian Authorities to Halt Deportation

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Nearly four years after being captured and tortured by the Taliban, Ahmad can still vividly recall the cell he was held in.

“The space was extremely damp, dark, and cold,” he recalls.

“The smell of moisture filled the air, and the dim lighting barely illuminated the suffocating space.”

Every corner of that place echoed with fear, loneliness, and the looming threat of torture.

The 31-year-old Hazara refugee is speaking with SBS News from a hideout in Pakistan, where he and his family have been living in secret for the past three and a half years, awaiting approval for humanitarian visas from the Australian government.

Before fleeing Afghanistan, Ahmad had been living a fulfilling life fighting for social justice.

But in August of 2021, his life came crashing down.

SBS News has changed his name due to safety concerns.

Ahmad’s work as a civil society activist focused on human rights, including the rights of women to education and employment. Source: Supplied

Hazaras targeted

Ahmad had been working as a social activist at an NGO promoting universal human rights, including the right for women and girls to be educated, and supporting efforts to peacefully oppose the Taliban’s extreme interpretation of Islamic law.

“People who were active in civil society, the government or in collaboration with foreign forces once had hope, a sense of [the] future, and a reason to strive,” he says.

“At that time, there was life for us.”

But when the United States, Australia and their allies withdrew from Afghanistan, following nearly two decades of military occupation in the aftermath of 9/11, the Taliban quickly swept back to power.

They abolished the Western-backed administration and, despite promising amnesty for former government workers, started a campaign of revenge killings and ‘enforced disappearances’ — instances where a person is detained or arrested by the state but knowledge of their whereabouts is denied.

According to a 2022 United Nations report, the Taliban has targeted civilian and military officials, human rights defenders and media workers.

Ahmad and his organisation also opened up a boys school in 2019 to help boost education rates across the board. Source: Supplied

Ahmad knew this campaign put him and his family under threat and that he had to get them to safety.

But in August, when he went to Kabul airport to find a pathway out of the country, he was seized by the Taliban.

“When the Taliban stopped the vehicle I was in, they took my phone, asked about my occupation and demanded my ID. After checking it, one of them said, ‘He’s a Hazara.'”

The Hazara people, to which Ahmad and his family belong, are the third-largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, making up around 9 per cent of the population. They have faced persecution in the country for centuries.

In the last three decades, much of this persecution has been at the hands of the Taliban, with human rights groups telling the UN Human Rights Council in March 2025 that Hazaras continue to face total political exclusion, arbitrary killings, forced disappearances, sexual violence and displacement from their ancestral lands.

‘They tortured me mercilessly’

After being held for two days at a police station in Police District 13 — one of Kabul’s municipal districts — Ahmad was transferred to Taliban Intelligence Unit 06 in the nearby Afshar settlement.

“When I was brought in, two Taliban members shouted, ‘Hazaras are infidels! Spies for foreign countries!” he recalls.

“Without any questioning, they immediately began beating me with their fists and cables. They tortured me mercilessly, both physically and mentally. From electric shocks to being hung upside down by my feet, they used every brutal and inhumane method.”

The sound of the blows, their hateful insults, and the cold concrete walls still echo in my memory.

Ahmad has provided SBS News with photos of the injuries he says he suffered during this torture session, which included bruising to his arms and a wound on his face that required stitches.

Source: Supplied

“They attempted to force me to confess that I had worked as a civil activist. However, I did not confess because I knew that if I admitted it, they would not release me and I would likely be killed,” he says.

After 16 days of detention, Ahmad was eventually released in September 2021 after being forced to provide a written and video-recorded pledge that he would never speak about this experience and never make any statements or take any actions against the Taliban.

Source: Supplied

Weeks later, he hired a smuggler to help him, his parents and his brother cross the Pakistani border.

“We were fully aware of the risks involved in crossing the border into Pakistan illegally, but we had no other choice,” Ahmad says

The four of them trekked for four hours on foot through extreme heat until they finally arrived at a bus station on the Pakistani side.

They travelled to the nearest city, Quetta, where Ahmad applied for a Refugee and Humanitarian visa to Australia, using his Australian cousin as their proposer. The application was lodged on 19 December 2021 — 1,300 days later, it remains pending.

Ahmad, his fiancée, his father, and his mother are all subject to the application, and Ahmad says that since filing, they have received no meaningful updates from the Department of Home Affairs.

“We have repeatedly asked for at least an update or any news regarding our application … Despite contacting them several times, neither I nor my cousin, who lives in Australia, have received any personal response or update from the Department of Home Affairs. Just auto-replies, nothing more,” he says.

A ‘difficult and frustrating process’

Meanwhile, the family are forced to simply sit and wait.

“We are not allowed to work, we are not allowed to study, and we have no idea where we are headed or what we should be doing,” Ahmad says.

“It is clear that our lives are currently suspended in limbo.”

The UN’s refugee agency reports there are more than 3.5 million Afghans living in Pakistan, including about 700,000 people who came after the Taliban returned to power in 2021. The UN estimates that half of these migrants are undocumented.

Ahmad’s living conditions in Quetta are basic due to poverty and the need to move quickly to evade police. Source: Supplied

George Lombard, a senior solicitor at Playfair Legal who has assisted Afghan-Australians with families stuck in Pakistan, says humanitarian visa applicants often need to wait several years before their cases are considered.

“People sit in a holding pattern. We know that a lot of applicants applying from Pakistan have been threatened with repatriation by the Pakistani government,” he says.

“Underneath it all is the Australian government, which probably doesn’t have the resources to even process the applications, let alone to reach in and find the people who are the most deserving and help them get visas.”

It’s a really, really difficult and frustrating process.

SBS News understands that since Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021, the Australian government has received more than 300,000 humanitarian visa applications from Afghan citizens alone.

Australia’s humanitarian program offers a total of 20,000 places, which takes into account applicants from other nations and regions experiencing conflict and violence, such as Sudan, Myanmar, the Middle East and Ukraine.

SBS News has been told Afghan applicants make up the largest of these cohorts admitted on humanitarian grounds, but even so, the majority of applications are expected to be rejected.

As the fate of Ahmad’s family hangs in the balance, awaiting a determination from the Australian government, they are living in fear of an intensifying effort by Pakistani authorities to detain and deport illegal Afghan migrants back to Afghanistan.

“We can’t go out because the Pakistani government deports illegal Afghan refugees. My friend was arrested by Pakistani police and deported to Afghanistan,” Ahmad says.

He says his family is living in “severe poverty”, has been forced to move homes three times to evade the Pakistani authorities, and they are reliant on the kindness of friends for food, often only surviving on portions of dry bread.

Lombard says it can be difficult for those like Ahmad and his family to know what to do when faced with persecution at home and a lack of security elsewhere.

“People just don’t know whether to go forward or back. People are desperately trying to stay in Pakistan in the hope that they’ll sooner or later be approved. Given the volume, it’s not something that’s easily resolved,” Lombard says.

A final plea to the Australian government

Maryam Zahid is the CEO of Afghan Women on the Move, a not-for-profit organisation that supports women and girls to achieve economic and social independence in Australia.

In 1999, Zahid fled the Taliban and came to Australia as a refugee under the Women at Risk humanitarian visa program.

“I also lived in Pakistan in the uncertainty of what a future holds for me. And I had no idea how long it’s going to take for my application to be processed, but I was 1 per cent of all applications globally to get a chance to come to Australia,” she says.

“The work that I’m doing right now, it is because I have walked in their shoes.”

A woman in a red top and with long black hair sits on a long table in front of a microphone and a small black screen panel, with "#AFGWomen" displayed on it.

Maryam Zahid has advocated for Afghan women at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Source: Supplied

Zahid says many in the Afghan Australian community have family in Pakistan facing the same challenges as Ahmad.

“There are several who are part of our organisation and there are many more in the community that are facing the worries of their remaining relatives and family members there,” she says.

“It’s been three-and-a-half years now that the majority of people applied due to the fear of the Taliban to come to Australia and seek refuge here. Their application is nowhere to be seen.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs said in a statement that the department “cannot comment on individual cases” due to “privacy reasons”.

SBS News understands the department does prioritise applications by ethnic minorities, such as the Hazaras, when it comes to assessing humanitarian visas, as well as other vulnerable groups, including women and girls and LGBTIQ+ applicants.

Zahid says the persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan is only escalating.

“The obvious one is the ban on secondary school and universities and education for girls. They’ve also restricted employment opportunities and limited freedom of movement, requiring a male guardian for travels,” she says.

“There are barriers in terms of accessing healthcare and health concerns, especially mental health, let alone going to seek any support for any type of domestic and family violence. It’s not even considered a worry in Afghanistan under the Taliban’s rule.”

This week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders, accusing them of the persecution of women and girls.

Ahmad fears for the possible future faced by his fiancée and mother if they are forced to return to Afghanistan, while he expects to face further violence and potentially death at the hands of the Taliban.

As he continues to hide from Pakistani authorities and awaits news about his visa application after years of uncertainty, he is pleading for a lifeline from the Australian government.

“It has been 42 long and painful months since I applied for the humanitarian visa and right now, I want the Australian government to please process my application and save us from this hopeless situation.”

This story was produced in collaboration with SBS Dari.