By midday, the Chaman border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan disappears under heat and dust. Trucks idle in long lines near customs gates while laborers wait for work under the harsh sun. Women sit beside cloth bundles holding the last of their belongings. Children move between buses selling water bottles and bread to travelers who often have nowhere permanent left to go.
For decades, movement across this border was shaped by war, trade, and family ties. Tribes crossed these lands long before modern checkpoints and passports existed. Families still live on both sides of the frontier, and routes connecting Kandahar, Spin Boldak, Chaman, and Quetta have remained active for generations.
But today, another force is driving migration across the border: climate collapse.
Across southern Afghanistan and Pakistan’s western border districts, drought is reshaping daily life. Wells are drying up, harvests are failing, and livestock is dying in extreme heat. Families that once survived through farming are now leaving villages because the land can no longer support them.
In districts like Chaman and Qila Abdullah, residents say the migration they see today looks different from the refugee waves of previous decades. Many of the people arriving are not escaping bombs or active conflict. They are escaping hunger, debt, and disappearing water.
At a roadside tea stall near Chaman, 42-year-old Abdul Hameed recalls the life he once had in a village outside Kandahar. His family cultivated grapes and pomegranates for generations, and even during difficult years of conflict, farming provided enough to survive.
“We stayed because the land gave us something back,” he says. “Now it gives us nothing.”
Over the past several years, repeated droughts devastated his village. Rainfall became increasingly unpredictable, groundwater levels dropped sharply, and the cost of diesel for water pumps became unaffordable after Afghanistan’s economic collapse in 2021. Eventually, Hameed sold his livestock to repay debts and crossed into Pakistan searching for work.
Now he unloads trucks near the Chaman crossing whenever labor is available. Some days he earns enough to send money home. Other days he returns empty-handed.
“People think migration happens suddenly,” he says. “But first the crops fail, then the animals die, then the debts grow. Leaving comes at the end.”
Afghanistan is considered one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries despite contributing almost nothing to global carbon emissions. According to the International Organization for Migration, climate-related disasters displaced hundreds of thousands of Afghans in recent years. Drought conditions across southern provinces, especially Kandahar, Helmand, and Uruzgan, have severely damaged agriculture and forced rural families toward cities and border crossings.
Climate scientists warn that rising temperatures and worsening water scarcity across South Asia are likely to intensify migration pressures in fragile regions already struggling with poverty and instability. Along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, those predictions are no longer theoretical.
The effects are visible throughout Chaman. Construction sites fill each morning with Afghan laborers searching for daily work. Informal settlements continue expanding near the border. Schools report growing numbers of displaced children whose education is repeatedly interrupted by migration, while local health workers describe increasing cases of malnutrition among newly arrived families.
In Pakistan’s Qila Abdullah district, local farmers are also battling water shortages. Standing beside a nearly dry irrigation canal outside Chaman, farmer Noor Ahmed says tensions over water have become more common.
“A few years ago, this canal reached every field,” he says. “Now there is barely enough for anyone.”
Ahmed says he understands why Afghan families continue crossing the border, but he worries about pressure on communities already struggling with poverty and shrinking resources.
“We are poor too,” he says. “When there is less water and less work, everyone suffers.”
The crisis unfolding along the border reflects a larger global reality. The United Nations has repeatedly described climate change as a “threat multiplier” because it deepens food insecurity, economic instability, and displacement at the same time. Yet people fleeing environmental collapse often fall outside traditional refugee protections under international law.
At the Chaman crossing, many migrants exist in that legal grey zone. They are not officially recognized as refugees because they are not fleeing direct violence. Yet drought, failed harvests, and economic collapse have made survival impossible in their hometowns.
After the Taliban returned to power in 2021, Afghanistan’s economy deteriorated rapidly. International aid sharply declined, unemployment surged, and inflation pushed food prices beyond the reach of millions. For rural communities already weakened by years of drought, the collapse accelerated migration.
Near the border crossing, 19-year-old Rahimullah waits every morning among dozens of young men hoping contractors will hire them for construction work in Quetta. He left Kandahar after his family’s wheat crop failed three years in a row.
“My father borrowed money every season,” he says. “But there was no rain.”
Rahimullah now lives in a cramped rented room with eight other laborers. Most of the money he earns is sent back to his family through informal transfer networks.
“When my mother calls, she asks when I am coming home,” he says. “I tell her I will return when farming returns.”
Aid agencies say climate migration in the region is increasingly becoming permanent rather than seasonal. Families that once crossed temporarily for work are now staying longer because conditions back home continue worsening.
At the same time, stricter deportation policies in Pakistan have created another layer of uncertainty. Since late 2023, Pakistan has accelerated expulsions of undocumented Afghans, forcing hundreds of thousands to return through crossings near Kandahar and Chaman. Humanitarian organizations warn that many returnees are being sent back to areas already facing severe food shortages and water stress.
The result is a painful cycle. Families leave because drought and poverty leave them with no alternatives, then return because borders tighten, only to attempt the journey again weeks or months later.
Humanitarian workers say the crisis cannot be understood only as migration or climate change. It is the overlap of environmental collapse, political instability, economic breakdown, and weak infrastructure all happening at once.
As evening falls over Chaman, trucks continue moving slowly through customs points under floodlights while tea stalls refill with laborers counting the day’s earnings before calling home. Among them is Gul Bibi, a widow from Kandahar traveling with her two grandchildren after being deported from Karachi earlier this year. Her sons had worked illegally at construction sites before authorities forced the family to leave Pakistan.
Back in their village, she says, there was nothing left: no water, no crops, and no work. Now they are trying to cross again to reach relatives near Quetta, carrying only a few blankets, cooking pots, and clothes packed into plastic bags.
For much of the world, climate migration is still discussed as a future crisis, but along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border it is already unfolding quietly every day through families forced to leave home because survival has become impossible.
