Afghan refugees caught in crossfire as Iran-Israel hostilities increase deportations

Kabul: Afghan citizen Enayatullah Asghari watched dismayed after Israel and Iran launched strikes on each other last month, as the Gulf nation where he had sought refuge turned more hostile, work on Tehran building sites dried up and he was accused of spying.

Asghari, 35, is among tens of thousands of Afghans whom Iran has deported home in the past few weeks, in the fallout of a conflict the United Nations says risks further destabilising Afghanistan, already battling a humanitarian crisis.

"It is hard to even find a place to rent, and if you find one, the price is unaffordable ... and there is no work at all," Asghari said at the end of his family's long journey back to western Afghanistan.

He said he had no idea what to do next in his home country, marooned in international isolation since the Islamist Taliban militia took over in 2021.

The United Nations refugee agency estimates Iran deported home an average of more than 30,000 Afghans each day during the war, up 15-fold from about 2,000 earlier.

"We've always striven to be good hosts, but national security is a priority, and naturally illegal nationals must return," Iran's government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Tuesday.

That did not mean expulsion, however, but rather a return to their homeland, the spokesperson added, without mention of a hunt for spies.

There was no immediate comment from the Afghanistan government.

Before a ceasefire was struck last week in their 12-day war, Iran and Israel traded strikes, which the US joined with an attack on Iran's uranium-enrichment facilities.

On national security grounds, Iran had already been cracking down this year on foreign nationals, including Afghans, but stepped up its efforts during the conflict, deported Afghans and humanitarian officials said in interviews.

Iranian authorities estimated about 2.6 million Afghans were living in the country without legal documentation in 2022, following the fall of Kabul as U.S.-led foreign forces withdrew.

"They saw us as suspected spies and treated us with contempt," Asghari said. "From ordinary people to the police and the government, they were always saying you Afghans are our first enemies, you destroyed us from inside."

Concern over pushback

In an interview, Arafat Jamal, the UNHCR representative for Afghanistan, said he was concerned about the pushback, as anger at the strikes could have spilled over on Afghans in Iran.

"They have undergone a very frightening war, we understand that but we also feel that perhaps the Afghans are being scapegoated and some of the anger is being taken out on them," he told Reuters in Kabul.

He warned of increasing concern of a "pefect storm" brewing for Afghanistan as neighbouring Pakistan also pushed back displaced Afghans in a huge repatriation drive begun in 2023.

Compounding Afghanistan's woes, its economy, crippled by sanctions on the banking sector since the Taliban took over, now faces severe aid cuts by Western capitals, he added.

"This is a recipe for a great amount of instability in the region for sure," said Jamal.

UNHCR's Afghanistan operations have received less than a quarter of the funding needed this year.

Afghanistan's aid program has shrunk to just $538 million from $3.2 billion three years ago. More than 1.2 million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan this year, often with just the clothes on their backs and any belongings they could carry.

Iran says it will keep up the action on illegal immigrants.

"We have legal migrants, many of them poets, writers, doctors, skilled workers and don’t want to push everyone out," the government spokesperson added.

"But when it comes to illegals, national policies that have been taken will be implemented."

Ahmad Fawad Rahimi, 26, said he had a valid work visa for Iran but decided to return last month as his family worried about the war.

En route he was picked up and placed in a detention camp, where he said inmates received little food and water, had their mobile telephones taken from them during their stay and were then charged high prices for transport across the border.

"Before the war, at least we would receive a warning the first time, and on the second arrest we would be deported," he said.

"But now we are all treated as spies. They say Afghans have sided with their enemies and must go back."