One of history’s biggest expulsions: Iran is throwing out 4m Afghans
Scapegoated for crime and espionage, more than 1.1 million have been deported this year, including 40,000 dumped at the border in a few hours.
In rented rooms in a remote village in eastern Iran, Bamin Bahmani and her husband clutch their two small sons, bags packed, and wait for a dreaded knock on the door.
Every day tens of thousands of Afghans like them are rounded up and sent back to the worst place in the world for a woman.
More than 1.1 million Afghans have been deported from Iran this year, half in the past five weeks, making it one of the largest forced expulsions in modern history.
Iranian authorities say they will not stop until they have expelled all undocumented Afghans, an estimated 4 million.
Bahmani, 29, has more reason than most to worry. After the Taliban seized power in 2021, the former teacher and graduate of Kabul University continued to teach girls secretly for a year, and was one of the few brave enough to join street demonstrations against the new regime.
Arrested in May 2022, six months pregnant, she was freed only after heavy bleeding.
Her husband was also picked up and tortured for five days. Once released, he fled, crossing illegally into Iran, while Bahmani sheltered with her in-laws in a village.
Only in December 2023 did she manage to get a visa for her and their baby to join him.
“I thought we were safe away from the Taliban,” she said.
In March, however, Iran said it was expelling all undocumented Afghans, even though many have lived there for decades.
The deportations have intensified since the recent 12-day war with Israel, with Iranian authorities claiming that Afghans had spied for the enemy.
State media broadcast footage of an alleged Afghan spy for Israel confessing to being paid $2000 for providing locations to another Afghan based in Germany.
“We’ve always strived to be good hosts, but national security is a priority, and naturally illegal nationals must return,” said Fatemeh Mohajerani, a government spokeswoman.
On some days last week more than 40,000 were dumped on the borders in just a few hours. There have been chaotic scenes as people wait for transport and processing in temperatures as high as 50C.
“Israel has more mercy than Iran!” shouted one man at Islam Qala, a border town, on Friday.
Fawzia Koofi, a former Afghan MP now in exile, said: “I heard of one big group of Afghans who paid to rent a big car to the border. The driver stopped in the middle of the desert and abandoned them.”
While some like Bahmani fled the Taliban in recent years, others have lived in Iran since the Soviet occupation in the 1980s or the first Taliban regime in the 1990s, only to find their lives uprooted in minutes, losing shops, homes and all they have. Aid agencies are struggling to deal with thousands of families in need of shelter, food and clothing.
According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), more than 546,000 undocumented Afghans returned between June 1 and July 9.
“This unprecedented surge hinders [our] ability to provide aid,” said Jorge Galindo, an IOM spokesman. “We are reaching only 10 per cent of those in need.”
Not only are repatriation camps overwhelmed, but many who fled the Taliban face the additional danger of retaliation, including those who worked for the security services of the previous government, and women activists. For girls aged 11 or over, it also means an end to schooling.
Last week the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, and his chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for “persecution of girls and women”.
Fearful of what may happen if they return, Bahnami’s husband tried in vain to renew their visas. Instead last week the Iranian police seized his phone and passport.
“We dare not go out,” says Bahnami, who gave birth to her second child in May. “Kind neighbours get us food. We have nowhere to go in Afghanistan. The Taliban will arrest us.”
Nor is it only Iran that is deporting Afghans en masse. Pakistan, home to about four million Afghans, has also demanded departure of all those undocumented, blaming them for an increase in crime and armed attacks. About a million were expelled last year and a further 323,581 this year, according to the IOM, most since April 1, when the government launched a second wave of round-ups.
As with Iran, some have lived there since the 1979 Soviet invasion, others were born there. About 700,000 sought refuge in Pakistan after the Taliban takeover. Among them are a group of teenage Afghan girls whose lives were changed by learning to play the guitar.
“It’s been really tough,” says Yasemine Khodadi, 18, known as Jellybean. “We’ve gone from hiding in Kabul to hiding in Islamabad. For three months we’ve been hiding in a basement.” She shares two rooms with her parents, three sisters and four brothers, the youngest of which is just two. “They keep asking why can’t we play outside like other kids?”
With police paying informants, she adds: “We are always worried about the neighbours reporting us.”
Jellybean is part of a group called the Miraculous Love Kids, set up by Lanny Cordola, an American musician, in 2012, after he read about two sisters selling chewing gum being killed in a suicide bomb outside a NATO base and their eight-year-old sister surviving.
He went to find the surviving sibling, Mursal: when she saw him playing the guitar, she asked if she could learn.
Cordola, who had played with the Beach Boys, used his contacts to acquire guitars and set up a school in some dusty rooms above a supermarket in Kabul. Girls were given an allowance if they attended and went to school. In 2017 they recorded the Beach Boys hit Love and Mercy, with the band’s leader Brian Wilson joining in remotely from California.
Jellybean joined aged ten, after Cordola saw her in a park selling gum and cleaning shoes. She had narrowly survived a suicide bombing. “She didn’t say much to start with but watched everything and quickly became a star,” he said.
“Music gave us hope,” said Jellybean, who wakes at 5am to practise and now speaks fluent English. “It changed our lives.”
After the Taliban returned, Cordola managed to extract 12 girls and restart the school in a room in Islamabad. They made videos and started recording their own material about refugees. Jellybean’s sister Uzra, who is seven, also joined.
But in October 2023, Pakistan announced it would send back Afghans. Four of the girls went. One was forcibly married to a Taliban who beats her. Cordola secured US visas for four others but then President Trump issued an executive order halting all refugee admissions.
In April, Pakistan started rounding up Afghans again. Since then the four guitar girls, Jellybean and Uzra, sisters Zakia, 16 and Shukria, 14, and their families – 18 people in total – have been in hiding.
“If we go back to Afghanistan our lives will be terrible,” said Jellybean. “If we show our faces, immediately we will die.”
They are now pinning their hopes on the UK after enlisting the help of Peter Gabriel, who reposted on his Facebook page their cover of his song Red Rain.
Meanwhile, the expulsions continue. So far this year more than 1.4 million people have “returned or forced to return to Afghanistan” from Iran and Pakistan, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
“I’m very concerned,” said Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan. “Forcing Afghans back to a country experiencing a humanitarian crisis … is unconscionable.”
The Times
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