On a Sunday in late January, pastor Irfan was preaching at a Bible seminar in Quetta, Pakistan, when he received panicked messages from members of an underground church in Afghanistan to which he is connected. Muslim extremists had discovered the location of the church near the city of Bamiyan and had killed around 24 Christian converts from the Hazara ethnic community.
Most died from bullet wounds, but the attackers slit the throat of one young man who was around 20 years old, Irfan said. Then they burned down the house church.
The news broke Irfan, and he struggled to speak at the seminar the next day after weeping the entire night. For a week, he slept only two or three hours a night, he recalled.
Irfan started traveling to Afghanistan in 2009 to build relationships and share the gospel. From his initial converts, the underground church has grown to hundreds of families. Although many have since immigrated to Europe, the United States, and Iran, Irfan now shepherds 85 families—60 Hazara and 25 Sunni Zadran families—who fled to Pakistan in 2021 before facing deportation back to Afghanistan years later. Due to the danger of Irfan’s work, CT is using only his first name.
Afghans are drawn to the Christian faith in part because they confront a religious system that often “blends faith with coercion, fear, and at times violence,” Irfan noted. Since the 2021 US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban and other extremist groups have sought to punish those who leave Islam.
“When they encounter the gospel, they encounter a radically different revelation: not a system of merit or religious performance but the proclamation of salvation accomplished through the finished work of Christ,” Irfan said.
He disciples the underground church by sending voice messages with sermons and discussion questions through virtual private networks. Video calls are unsafe and unreliable, Irfan noted, but voice messages are relatively secure and easy to delete. Occasionally he crosses the border to visit the underground church, although he hasn’t been able to enter the country since early 2025 due to increased fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan along the border.
“They are facing so many challenges, and there are so many hardships,” the pastor said of Afghan Christians. On April 16, he heard extremists had killed another 10 Hazara converts in a separate attack. “The families are trying to hide and are seeking support.”
One Christian couple missed the January church service in Afghanistan because their young daughter was in the hospital. When they learned of the violent assault, they immediately fled the city and contacted Irfan, saying they feared the Taliban was looking for them.
The attackers abducted two young women from the church, sisters who are about 18 and 21 years old, Irfan said. The women’s parents and three younger siblings—including a boy around age 4—all died in the attack.
Irfan recalled baptizing the family nearly four years ago after they fled to Pakistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover. In a photograph of the baptism, Irfan is next to the girls’ father, who is standing in a small inflatable swimming pool. The family had since returned to Afghanistan after the Pakistani government began deporting undocumented foreigners.
At least 600,000 Afghans have fled to Pakistan since 2021, and Irfan was part of the humanitarian efforts to resettle them. Many arrived with “no clothes, no resources, and no hope,” he noted, so his network in Pakistan sourced housing and helped them start small businesses. Many have hidden themselves among the Pakistani Hazara community—including 35 Christian families whom Irfan pastors.
Some were already Christians, and others converted after encountering Irfan’s preaching. Yet in November 2023, Pakistani authorities began a nationwide operation to deport undocumented Afghan refugees, a trend that has recently intensified due to the ongoing war between the two countries.
During the April 16 attack in the Afghan city of Herat, extremists killed 30 people from the Hazara community, including 10 converts to Christianity who were directly connected to Irfan’s underground ministry network. He said the extremists slit the throats of the Christians, who were in their early 30s, inside their homes.
Irfan knew the men and said one of them had previously worked with local hospitals that operated under international organizations when American troops were in Afghanistan. “He had already been receiving threats, as the Taliban were actively searching for individuals associated with such work,” Irfan said. Another victim had gone back to Afghanistan in 2024—leaving his family behind in Pakistan—during one of the country’s deportation waves.
Hazara are a persecuted minority in Afghanistan, yet Irfan believes the men were likely identified as Christians and targeted because of their faith. The Hazara community makes up 10 to 20 percent of Afghanistan’s 45 million people. The ethnic and religious minority group is predominantly Shiite Muslim and is despised by radicals in a country where Sunni Muslims are the majority.
The Taliban and extremists have persecuted Hazara for decades, said Joel Veldkamp, director of public advocacy for human rights group Christian Solidarity International (CSI). Yet in recent years the attacks have increased.
“Unfortunately, they have suffered a lot of violence,” Veldkamp said. He added that Hazara are easy to spot because “their facial features are very distinctive.”
Those who convert to Christianity take on increased risk.
Veldkamp said Christians in Afghanistan pretend to be Muslims unless they live in remote regions far from Taliban control: Men must attend prayers at local mosques and grow beards, and women can’t leave their homes unless they are completely covered and are with a male escort. Those who fail to comply risk questioning or various forms of punishment.
In January, the Taliban clarified sharia law codes to permit forms of slavery and to allow husbands to beat their wives, Veldkamp added. Another particularly chilling expansion, article 58, applies to apostates. “A woman who has left Islam for another religion—she is supposed to be imprisoned for life and given ten lashes every three days until she returns to Islam,” Veldkamp said.
It’s difficult to know how many Christians remain in Afghanistan. According to CSI, some estimates suggest around 20,000 lived in Afghanistan at the time of the US troop withdrawal in August 2021.
The withdrawal followed 20 years of bipartisan war fatigue, though critics blamed the Biden administration for its poor execution, which created the conditions for a quick Taliban takeover. Before that, the US-backed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan governed the country. Its collapse led to more than 1,000 civilian deaths, widespread displacement, and a decline in freedoms.
Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Hudson Institute, helped evacuate Christians after the Taliban takeover and said many were fearful of the growing Islamic extremism.
“There are terror groups that are even more radical than the Taliban that are going through. And when they find out that there is a secret church … they’ll kill them,” Shea said. “I dealt with a number of Christians during that period in 2021, and they were just terrified.”
Shea said many Christians lived on the roofs of abandoned buildings and came down only for food and water. Even some of those who stayed inside safe houses grew paranoid as Shea—in connection with Glenn Beck’s Nazarene Fund—couldn’t reveal to them their evacuation plans due to security concerns. They feared they wouldn’t be able to leave the country.
Even before the Taliban takeover, Christians in Afghanistan faced persecution, Shea noted. In the years that followed, escape routes out of the country decreased as human rights violations increased.
In 2024, the US Commission on International Freedom recommended the State Department designate Afghanistan as a “country of particular concern,” but US refusal to recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government has complicated the process. The World Watch List ranks Afghanistan as the 11th-most-dangerous country in the world for Christians, as discovered believers likely face beating, torture, and even death.
Irfan encourages Afghan Christians by preaching about the church in Smyrna—the persecuted but faithful believers in Revelation 2:8–11—and the life of Daniel.
Veldkamp said Christians can support the underground church by advocating within their own countries’ legal systems for asylum pathways for persecuted believers and by supporting underground networks of support and aid. “It’s a very, very tall order, but there are lots of church workers in Pakistan who are willing to help with this, and I think we really need to take them up on that,” he said.
Veldkamp urges Christians to pray for the Afghan church. “God has promised us that he will hear our prayers for our brothers and sisters,” he said. “Prayer…molds our hearts to be passionate about the things that the Lord is passionate about so that our hearts will break when his heart breaks.”
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