13,000 People Cross Into Pakistan From Iran During War: IOM

Pakistan is facing the human spillover of the Iran conflict, with the United Nations migration agency reporting that more than 13,000 people entered the country from Iran over the past six weeks. The movement, recorded through the Taftan-Mirjaveh and Gabd-Kumb-Rimdan crossings, shows how quickly regional instability can redirect civilian travel patterns toward Pakistan’s western border.

According to the International Organisation for Migration, 13,044 people crossed into Pakistan during the reporting period, equal to a daily average of 296 arrivals. Most of the movement was concentrated at Taftan-Mirjaveh, which handled the overwhelming share of entries, while Gabd-Kumb-Rimdan accounted for a smaller but still notable portion of the traffic. The figures indicate that the border remained active even as the security situation in and around Iran unsettled normal travel.

The pattern of arrivals was not constant throughout the six weeks. The highest inflows were seen in the first half of March, when many Pakistani nationals, especially students and tourists, returned home soon after the conflict intensified. Movements then dropped sharply during Ramazan and Eid, only to pick up again after the holiday period, although they did not fully return to the earlier peak.

Official reporting also showed an important shift in the composition of those crossing the border. Pakistani returnees became less prominent after the holidays, largely because many had already made their way home during the first phase of the crisis. By contrast, entries by Iranian nationals rose again to levels seen before Eid, though the reasons for that rebound were not clearly established in the report.

Pakistani authorities told the IOM that Iranian entrants were arriving with proper documentation, including visas, passports or local movement permits. That detail is significant because it suggests the movement, while linked to insecurity, has not been dominated by undocumented crossings. Authorities also said that 52 third-country nationals had been recorded in Pakistan by April 13, most of them tourists or business travellers who had been stranded in Iran and were using Pakistani land routes to continue onward to their home countries because flights were unavailable.

The report described cross-border movement as broadly stable and largely uninterrupted despite the regional tension. A temporary slowdown was recorded during Nowruz and Eid, but traffic later recovered, helped in part by the resumption of taxi transit services after a prolonged suspension. For many travellers, this made overland movement more practical at a time when flight disruptions and uncertainty had narrowed other options.

The Pakistan-bound flow also sits within a much larger regional displacement picture. The IOM recorded 170,153 entries into Afghanistan from Iran during the same period, compared with 73,246 movements in the opposite direction. That contrast shows Pakistan was not the only country absorbing the pressure created by the conflict, but it remained an important corridor for returnees, visitors and stranded foreign nationals trying to move safely across the region.

There were also early signs of movement back toward Iran after the announcement of a ceasefire. Between April 7 and 13, displacement tracking in Afghanistan recorded 1,144 movements of Iranian nationals from Afghanistan to Iran, compared with only 37 going the other way. Survey data suggested these journeys were orderly and family-based, with most travellers carrying valid identity and travel documents and many transiting overland because direct international flights remained disrupted.

For Pakistan, the implications go beyond a simple headcount at the border. The inflow highlights the country’s exposure to shocks originating in neighboring states and places added importance on border management, documentation checks, transport coordination and humanitarian monitoring in Balochistan. It also shows how students, pilgrims, tourists, traders and families can all become part of a wider crisis when air travel is interrupted and land crossings become the main escape route.

What happens next will depend heavily on whether the ceasefire holds and regional transport links continue to normalize. If calm persists, some of the emergency movement may ease and more people could return to Iran or complete onward travel through regular channels. But if tensions flare again, Pakistan may once more find itself managing a renewed wave of cross-border arrivals driven not by long-term migration, but by sudden conflict-related disruption.