Afghan Christian refugees in Central Asia who escaped the Taliban, especially women, are facing tremendous threats of physical harm, deportation, and social vulnerability in their new countries, most of them Muslim-majority states, the Christian humanitarian organization Open Doors US explained to Breitbart News on Sunday.
Sunday marked International Women’s Day, an occasion in which human rights activists and global organizations such as the United Nations call for expansions and respect for women’s rights around the world. Afghanistan under the Taliban terrorist rule is one of the world’s most repressive regimes against women, enacting laws that make it effectively illegal – and punished with swift brutality – for women to be seen in public, even from a window, or for their voices to be heard.
Open Doors ranked Afghanistan number 11 on its 2026 World Watch List of countries that suffer persecution of Christians, a list routinely topped by totalitarian North Korea except for in 2022, when the Taliban’s return in Afghanistan skyrocketed the country to the top of the list. Every country bordering Afghanistan, where most of its refugees fled, also persecute Christians. On the 2026 list, Pakistan ranked number eight, Iran ranked number ten, Turkmenistan ranked 35, Uzbekistan ranked 25, Tajikistan ranked 27, and China came in at number 17.
Iran and Pakistan, home to the largest Afghan refugee populations, are only marginally more respectful of women’s rights than the Taliban. In Iran, women can be beaten to death for incorrectly wearing a hijab while, in Pakistan, “honor killings” of women by family members are not uncommon.
“For Afghan Christian converts, faith adds a compounding layer of vulnerability — most of the countries where Afghans have fled are majority-Muslim countries where Christian converts have virtually no legal protections,” Open Doors US explained in response to questions from Breitbart News.
The United Nations has called for action on Sunday using the theme “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls.” Open Doors is marking International Women’s Day highlighting the story of “Ariana” (a pseudonym), an Afghan refugee living in an unnamed Central Asian country as a Christian. Ariana faced the threat of honor killing from her own brother, who said he would “come and kill” her if her conversion from Islam was true.
“I realized that women were raped, beaten and even publicly shamed for leaving their religion,” she told Open Doors, referring to the situation in Afghanistan.
In her adopted country, Ariana quietly shares Christianity with those in her community, fearing deportation at any time.
“We meet women to share God’s Word and pray together,” she explained. “Some of them are Muslim. They are grateful and say, ‘When you come, we find peace.’”
“I was born into a Muslim family and was raised in a very restrictive society, so this thing that I have tasted from God, knowing the way, the truth, and the life, I want [other Afghans] to also taste this salt of life and to drink this living water,” she said, explaining her reason for continuing to share. “In Matthew 28:19, Jesus says, ‘Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.’ This motivates me because I consider it a duty that I must do.”
“Even in Central Asia, believers like Ariana live as refugees without legal status, in a country hostile to Christians, under constant threat of deportation,” Open Doors US told Breitbart News. “Ariana describes quietly visiting Afghan families to pray and read Scripture together.”
“Inside Afghanistan, no visible church exists — small groups meet in secret wherever and however they can,” Open Doors US continued. “Bible access happens primarily through memorization. The Taliban even conducts random phone inspections searching for religious content, and believers have had to be nimble in how they deal with this challenge.”
The Taliban, a jihadist terrorist organization, flatly denies the existence of Christianity in the country.
“There are no Christians in Afghanistan. Christian minority has never been known or registered here,” Inamullah Samangani, a Taliban spokesman, told Voice of America in 2022. The Taliban took over Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, following former American President Joe Biden’s decision to extend the 20-year Afghan War beyond a May 2021 deadline that President Donald Trump had established in his first term. Contrary to the group’s claims, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) estimates that as many as 12,000 Christians were living in Afghanistan in 2022.
Following the Taliban takeover, about 10 million Afghans left the country, the largest numbers of them going to Pakistan and Iran, Open Doors US observed. Both countries have enacted sprawling, abrupt mass deportation campaigns that have elicited outrage even from the Taliban, which found itself with minimal resources to address the flood of returnees.
In October 2023, the government of Pakistan ordered nearly 2 million Afghans – 1.73 million – to leave the country voluntarily by November 1 for face deportations, a move the Taliban called “unacceptable.” Iran, believed to be home to 4 million Afghans previously, ordered its Afghan refugees to leave also; in July 2025, the United Nations estimated that 900,000 Afghans living in Iran had returned home that year.
“According to UNHCR’s 2024 Global Trends report, by the end of 2024, the number of Afghan refugees reported globally decreased by 10 percent to reach 5.8 million, reflecting returns to Afghanistan from both the Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan,” Open Doors US noted in remarks to Breitbart News. At home in Afghanistan, “apostasy is treated as a capital offense, and conversion to Christianity is effectively a death sentence. Mere suspicion of conversion can trigger immediate arrest, home destruction, or honor killings.”
“Christian women face ‘double persecution,’” Open Doors US observed, “both for their gender and their faith. For security reasons, we are not able to publish specific details of violence against individual Christians.”
The situation in Pakistan could potentially worsen as its government has declared war on the Taliban – Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif literally described the situation as “open war” last week. The United Nations estimated on Friday that the conflict, over accusations of each country hosting jihadists targeting the other, has already displaced over 100,000 people.
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