Iran has ordered a million Afghans without documents to leave by April. Killid investigates why refugees choose to stay.
* Laila, 21, has lived all her life in Turbat Jam, a refugee camp housing Afghan families, near Mashhad in Iran.
Iran has ordered a million Afghans without documents to leave by April. Killid investigates why refugees choose to stay.
* Laila, 21, has lived all her life in Turbat Jam, a refugee camp housing Afghan families, near Mashhad in Iran. She has never been to Afghanistan. In fact, as an Afghan refugee she cannot leave the camp without written permission from the authorities. Laila’s three sisters and two brothers study in the camp school. Ever since she finished high school she has been confined to the house. Her family cannot afford to send her to university, and the Iranian authorities are indifferent to the plight of Afghan refugees. She wishes the Afghan government and international organisations would make it possible for them to return to Afghanistan.
* Zahra Ebrahimi was from Herat. Her family has lived in Turbat Jam since 1994 when the half-mud, half-concrete camp was created to house refugees fleeing the Taleban regime. She says the Iranian authorities have not provided the refugees with any means of livelihood. As a result the young people in the camp are frustrated, and undisciplined. Even UN assistance has not been regular. Can’t the Afghan government facilitate the repatriation of refugees from Iran, she pleads.
* Najila has lived in the camp for 17 years. Her husband, a labourer who has got permission to work, travels to Mashhad every day. “We have to live here until living conditions improve in our country. Then we will return,” she says resignedly.
* Najibullah, 25, went back to Afghanistan last year. But he could not find a job. Because of continuing violence in Afghanistan, he chose to return to Iran despite the insecurities of a life of an illegal immigrant. He complains bitterly about the harassment by the Iranian police. He says he has been beaten. Yet he is unwilling to go back home. “There are no jobs there,” he says.
In December, the Iranian government said Afghan refugees who were not registered would be given three months to leave the country. The Afghan Ministry of Immigration and Returnees has called Tehran’s decision “sudden” and “unreasonable”, and said it does not have the capacity to support thousands of returning Afghans in the bitterly cold winter months.
Islamuddin Jurat, the spokesman of the Ministry of Immigration and Returnees, warns of a “human tragedy” if the nearly one million unregistered immigrants are forcefully expelled.
Mohammad Ajami, head of Foreign Nationals and Immigrants department in Khurasan province told Killid there are more than two million Afghans – legal and illegal residents – living in camps and 27 provinces in the country. In the Turbat Jam camp alone there are 950 families (about 5,000 people). He says the government provides registered refugees with free services and cash assistance. Ajami says things have become more difficult since Tehran cut the budget for refugees in camps which are called “Guest Cities”. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, was providing relief assistance – clothes and food supplies – since 2005 but that too has decreased.
Spiralling cost of living
The situation for Afghan refugees is set to become harder with the worsening economic situation in Iran as the US and EU tightens sanctions to try to force the Iranian government to abandon its nuclear programme.
The petro-dollar rich government-controlled economy of Iran had for nearly three decades ensured a relatively decent standard of living for all families living in Iran including Afghan refugees. Food, fuel, education, transport and many other goods and services were generously subsidised by the government. Families that had been able to obtain legal refugee status were able to send their children to government schools and let them study in a state-run education system known for its efficiency and quality of education. For those without legal papers, hundreds of private, Afghan-managed schools, set up by more entrepreneurial Afghans, provided inexpensive education. In 2008, there were 285,000 Afghan refugee school students and, university students spread throughout Iran.
However, stringent economic conditions have sent prices of all commodities, goods and services spiralling. School fees have gone out of the reach of many families dependent on daily wages: families have to pay up to 75 USD per child, despite earning a daily wage of 10 USD per day.
Most Afghan refugee families are dependent on the daily labour of male members, and the income it provides. Factories, poultry and chicken and cattle farms and thousands of small family-run manufacturing units employ the bulk of the working population among these Afghan refugees. Few if any of the refugees seem to be involved in any form of entrepreneurship and income opportunities remain uniform and scarce. Women are rarely involved in income-generating activities, and further, the general level of education is low with many Afghan refugees being illiterate.
Refugees are provided with vocational training as motor mechanics, electricians and construction work which will be useful to them when they return to Afghanistan, says Ajami.
Yearning to go home
Refugees this reporter met in Iran confided that if they were sure they would be rehabilitated in Afghanistan they would go home. Many Afghans in Iran are unaware that education is free in Afghan schools and universities. The Afghan consulate in Mashhad has not been of much use to them, refugees in Turbat Jam camp say. All the news they get about Afghanistan is through the Iranian media which continues to paint a bleak picture of the situation in the country. Mohammad Ajami defends the Iranian media, and says it is for the Afghan government to show the new Afghanistan to its people in Iran. “The Iranian government has done its utmost to return the refugees to their country,” he says.
Ajami admits Iranian security officials harass and beat up Afghans, but he justifies it saying they were illegal aliens. According to him, every month, a number of unregistered refugees volunteer to be repatriated through Doogharoon and Milak checkpoints in Nimruz province.
However, human rights organisations accuse Iranian authorities of mistreating the refugees. Afghans are forcibly deported, they say. Sayed Abdul Qader Rahimi, director of AIHRC (Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission) in western Afghanistan says Afghan children have been rounded up and dumped across the border without the knowledge of their families. He says there are records of at least 300 such cases at Islam Qala border crossing in Herat and Pol-e Abrisham in Nimruz. The children – both girls and boys, some as young as 11 years – are traumatised after they have been separated from their families and abandoned in a country they have never seen.
According to figures compiled by the UNHCR, a total of 18,152 Afghan refugees returned from Iran in 2011, well over double the number in the previous year.
Complicated situation
UNHCR officials in Mashhad say Afghan refugees face a very difficult situation. Narasimha Rao, UNHCR commissioner in Mashhad, says: “The condition of Afghan refugees is more complicated than other countries.” He says there are cases of double citizenship, families without caretakers, illegal immigrants, people with health problems, etc. As illegal immigrants they have no rights. There are 5,600 Afghan prisoners in Iran, more than half of them sentenced to death for drug trafficking.
Janan Musazai, spokesman in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, says the Afghan ambassador in Iran, Obaidullah Abid, has travelled to every province in Iran to evaluate the condition of Afghan prisoners, and the health and social situation of Afghans in refugee camps. The ministry, he said, has ordered Afghanistan’s consulates in Mashhad and Zabedan to monitor the Afghan refugee situation in Iran.
Humayoon Nazari, a political affairs expert in Herat, says every year the Iranian government expels masses of Afghan refugees in violation of international conventions. He blames the Karzai government for “weak polices regarding Afghan refugees, which has enabled Iran to threaten to expel the refugees in the bitter winter”. The refugees are trapped, he says, between the government’s prevarication and the budget cut backs of aid agencies for the repatriation and rehabilitation of Afghan refugees.
