Published by the Atlantic
Last month’s war with Israel and the United States lasted only 12 days, but Iran is likely to feel its consequences for years. The country’s intelligence services failed to prevent Israel from assassinating many top military officials, and now the Iranian regime is lashing out in all directions. It has handed down harsher sentences to political prisoners, harassed members of religious and ethnic minorities, and executed dozens of people. But one community has suffered perhaps more than any other: Afghan migrants in Iran, who number as many as 6 million by some estimates.
In the past few months, Iran has deported hundreds of thousands of Afghans—The New York Times reports 1.4 million since January—sending them back across the 572-mile border the two countries share. This process began well before the Israeli bombing campaign. Back in March, Iranian authorities warned Afghans that many of their temporary residence papers would soon cease to be valid. But the war seems to have accelerated the campaign. Iran deported more than 100,000 Afghans within a few days last month. In June alone, at least 5,000 children were separated from their parents. The security forces have haphazardly picked up thousands of Afghans and even people suspected of being Afghans. Some are legal residents who were deported before they could produce their papers. In some cases, authorities have torn up residency papers. Every day, thousands are boarded onto buses bound for Afghanistan. Both the Taliban administration and the United Nations migration officials there have complained about the sheer number of migrants appearing at the border.
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