‘Where do we even go?': Iran deports more than one million Afghans

Irish Times

4 days ago

At the sand-swept border between
Iran
and
Afghanistan
, nearly 20,000 are crossing every day – shocked and fearful Afghans who have been
expelled from Iran
with few belongings in a wave of targeted crackdowns and xenophobia.
More than 1.4 million Afghans have fled or been deported from Iran since January during a government clampdown on refugees in the country without authorisation, according to the United Nations' refugee agency. More than half a million have been forced into Afghanistan just since the war between Israel and Iran last month, returned to a homeland already grappling with a severe humanitarian crisis and draconian restrictions on women and girls, in one of the worst displacement crises of the past decade.
They are being dumped at an overcrowded border facility in western Afghanistan, where many expressed anger and confusion to New York Times journalists over how they could go on with few prospects in a country where some have never lived, or barely know any more.
'I worked in Iran for 42 years, so hard that my knees are broken, and for what?' Mohammad Akhundzada, a construction worker, said at a processing centre for returnees in Islam Qala, a border town in northwestern Afghanistan, near Herat.
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The mass expulsions threaten to push Afghanistan further toward the brink of economic collapse with the sudden cut-off of vital remittance money to Afghan families from relatives in Iran.
The sudden influx of returnees also piles on Afghanistan's already grim unemployment, housing and healthcare crises. More than half of Afghanistan's estimated population of 41 million already relies on humanitarian assistance.
Taliban authorities distribute cash stipends to Afghans returning from Iran, many of whom were expelled with few belongings, at a reception centre in Islam Qala, Afghanistan. Photograph: Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times
With a cane by his side, Akhundzada was waiting with his wife and four children, all born in Iran, for a bus to take them to Kabul, the crowded Afghan capital. He was hoping that some relatives could host them, despite the lack of spare rooms.
'We don't have anything,' said Akhundzada (61), 'and we have nowhere to go.'
Driven out
Iran hosts the world's largest refugee population, and about 95 per cent – estimated to be around four million – are Afghans, according to the UN refugee agency. Iran says the real number is closer to six million, after decades of war and upheaval in Afghanistan.
Iran limits where Afghans can live and work – only in 10 of the country's 31 provinces – and they are usually allowed only arduous, low-skill work.
Iran's government has said it can no longer absorb Afghan refugees given its own economic crisis and shortage of natural resources, including water and gas.
In March, the government said Afghans in the country without authorisation would be deported and set a July 6th deadline for voluntary departures. But after last month's 12-day conflict with Israel, the crackdown intensified.
Security forces have raided work places and neighbourhoods, stopped cars at checkpoints set up throughout big cities and detained scores of Afghans before sending them to overcrowded deportation centres in sweltering heat.
Officials and state media, without providing evidence, have claimed that Afghans were recruited by Israel and the United States to stage terrorist attacks, seize military sites and build drones.
Kadijah Rahimi (26), a cattle herder, echoing many Afghans at the border crossing, said that when she was arrested in Iran last month, the security agent told her: 'We know you're working for Israel.'
Abolfazl Hajizadegan, a sociologist in Tehran, the Iranian capital, said Iran's government was using Afghans as scapegoats to deflect blame for intelligence failures that enabled Israel to infiltrate widely within Iran.
'Mixing Afghan deportations with the Iran-Israel conflict underscores the regime's reluctance to acknowledge its security and intelligence shortcomings,' Hajizadegan said in an interview.
Hate crimes
The spying accusations have fuelled racist attacks on Afghans in Iran in recent weeks, according to interviews with more than two dozen Afghans living in Iran or those who have recently returned to Afghanistan, reports by aid and rights groups, and videos on social media and news media.
A Taliban official hands out bags of cucumber to Afghan refugees at reception centre in the border town of Islam Qala, Afghanistan. Photograph: Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times
Afghans have been beaten or attacked with knives; faced harassment from landlords and employers who are also withholding their deposits or wages; and have been turned away from banks, bakeries, pharmacies, schools and hospitals.
Ebrahim Qaderi was riding his bicycle to work to a cardboard factory in Tehran one morning last month when two men stopped him. They shouted 'dirty Afghan' and demanded his smartphone. When Qaderi refused, they kicked him in the leg and slashed his hand with a knife, he recounted at a relocation centre in Herat. His mother, Gull Dasta Fazili, said doctors at four hospitals turned him away because he was Afghan, and that they left Iran because of the attack.
In Iran, many Afghans said they lived in constant fear and were staying home. Farah (35), a computer engineer in Tehran, said in a telephone interview that neighbourhood youths attacked her and her four-year-old son as they were walking home one day last week and repeatedly kicked the child.
Last week, Farah, who like others interviewed by the Times asked that her last name not be published out of fear of retribution, saw an Afghan woman being beaten while riding the metro. 'I sat there paralysed and shaking because I knew if I said a word I would be also beaten,' she said.
Even Afghans who are legal residents say security guards have ripped their documents and deported them anyway. Ali (36), who said he had been born and raised in Iran and had legal status, was stopped at a checkpoint along with an Iranian friend recently.
'He told me: 'I'm going to tear up your residency card, what are you going to do? You are going to a deportation camp,'' Ali said. 'I was shaking with fear. I begged and argued with them, saying all my life I have lived in Iran, please don't do this to me.'
Mohammad Akhundzada, a construction worker in Iran for decades, carries biscuits provided by aid groups to his family in the border town of Islam Qala, Afghanistan. Photograph: Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times
Struggling
Jawad Mosavi and nine of his family members stepped off the bus from Iran last week, scrambling under the sweltering heat of Islam Qala to gather his thoughts and the family's dozen suitcases, rugs and rucksacks.
'Where do we even go?' he called out.
His son Ali Akbar (13) led the way to the building where they could get their certificates of return. His half-open backpack carried his most precious belongings – a deflated soccer ball, a speaker and some headphones to listen to his favourite Iranian hits, in Persian. 'The only kind of music I understand,' he said.
Like the Mosavi family, between 20,000 and 25,000 people were left to navigate a maze of luggage, tents and fellow returnees every day last week, trying to find their way through crowded buildings and warehouses run by Afghan authorities and UN agencies.
Mothers changed their babies' diapers on filthy blankets amid relentless gusts of wind. Fathers queued for hours to get their fingerprints taken and collect some emergency cash under temperatures hovering over 95 degrees. Outnumbered humanitarian workers treated dehydrated returnees at a field clinic while others hastily distributed food rations or dropped off large cubes of ice in water containers.
Afghanistan was already grappling cuts in foreign aid from the United States and other donors before Iran began expelling Afghans en masse. Even before then, nearly a million Afghans had been ejected or pressed to leave from Pakistan. Organisations have been able to fund only a fifth of humanitarian needs in the country this year, and more than 400 healthcare centres have been shut down in recent months.
Uncertain futures
Afghan officials have pledged to build 35 townships across the country to cope with the influx of returnees, many of whom have been deported without being allowed to collect belongings or cash from the bank.
Afghanistan's prime minister, Muhammad Hassan Akhund, has urged Iran to show restraint in the deportations, 'so as to prevent the emergence of resentment or hostility between the two brotherly nations.'
'We have to recognise that Iran has accommodated lots of Afghans and has the right to decide who can stay and who cannot,' said Miah Park, the country director for the UN Migration agency in Afghanistan. 'But we demand that they be treated in a humane and dignified manner.'
A mother and child get medicine from a United Nations-run pharmacy at a reception centre for refugees returning from Iran. Photograph: Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times
In Islam Qala, many Afghans said they were coming back to a country they hardly recognised since the Taliban took control and imposed strict rule in 2021.
Zahir Mosavi, the patriarch of the family, said he dreaded having to halt education for his four daughters because the Taliban have banned girls' education above sixth grade.
'I want to keep them busy, I want them to learn something,' he said.
One daughter, Nargis, was in eighth grade in Iran. Now, she said she would try to focus on the tailoring skills she had learned. 'I'm not good at it, but at least there's that,' she said.
That evening, after a day at the processing facility in Islam Qala, the family boarded a van bound for Herat, the largest city in western Afghanistan, 70 miles from the border.
Ali Akbar cried throughout the trip when he realised he had lost his phone, and with it the only way to listen to his favourite Iranian music.
The family dropped off their suitcases at 1am in a public park that had been transformed into a tent city hosting 5,000 people. Single men slept outside, using tree trunks as pillows. The family's women and children received two tents.
A journey of hundreds of miles still lay ahead, to their home province of Helmand, in the rural south. Few opportunities were there, but they decided it was all they could afford.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times