Kabul (AFP) – The Taliban government said on Saturday that Afghans who fled to Qatar, fearing reprisals over their collaboration with US forces, may return home “with full confidence”.

The administration of US President Donald Trump, which has made a sweeping crackdown on immigration a signature policy, had given a March 31 deadline to close a camp where more than 1,100 Afghans were staying at a former US base in Qatar.

Afghans have been going through the base for processing while seeking to move to the United States, fearing persecution by Taliban authorities for having worked with US forces before they withdrew and the Western-backed government collapsed in 2021.

“According to media reports, a number of Afghan nationals who had been awaiting US visas in the State of Qatar have been asked to choose between the repatriation to Afghanistan or resettlement in a third country,” foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi said in a statement posted on X.

“Afghanistan constitutes the shared homeland of all Afghans & it invites all those concerned… (to) return to their homeland, whose doors remain open to them, with full confidence & peace of mind.”

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