Iran drives out 1.5 million Afghans, with some branded spies for Israel

Ali Ahmed’s eyes fill with tears as he raised his shirt to show deep bruises on his back.

While he was detained, the Iranian officers hit him and accused him of spying, he says. “They used hoses, water pipes and wooden panels to strike me. They treated us like animals.”

He was talking to the BBC earlier this month in Islam Sala on the borders of the two countries, before returning to Afghanistan. His name has been changed to protect his identity.

Iran – which says it hosts more than four million Afghans, is not documented, fled the conflict in their homeland – was intensifying deportations for several months. In March, those who did not have papers have a final date in July to leave voluntarily, but a short war with Israel in June, the authorities by force returned hundreds of thousands of Afghans, claiming national security concerns.

Daily returns peak in about 50,000 people in early July, according to the United Nations – often after arduous trips.

Ali Ahmed says that Iranian officials confiscated his money and phone and left him without “one penny to return.” He lived in Iran for two and a half years.

Iran’s campaign coincided with widespread accusations that link Afghans to the Israeli Intelligence Agency, Mossad, including Iranian media reports that police sources claiming that some individuals have been arrested for spying.

“We are afraid to go anywhere, and constantly anxiety that we may be classified as spies,” said one of the people, who wanted to not be identified.

“You are the Afghans are spies”, “You are working with Israel” or “You are building drones in your homes”, they are other repeated accusations, according to this person.

Tehran may be “looking for a scapegoat” because of the shortcomings in the war against Israel.

“The Iranian government is very embarrassing because of its security failures,” he says, which shows Iran, “has been completely penetrated by Israeli intelligence.”

“So they had to find someone blame.”

Critics also say that spy accusations aim to buy legitimacy to the government’s plan to deport the unconventional Afghans.

BBC tried to contact the Iranian government, but she did not receive a response. The state -backed Islamic News Agency said that the return of Afghan refugees “without tension and respect for human rights … is a goal that is followed up at all levels.”

Abdullah Razai, whose name was also changed, has a similar story to Ali Ahmed.

In the detention center in which he was detained, about 15 Iranian officers were injured to harm him and others pass.

“The Iranian police tore my visa and my passport and hit me hard. They accused me of being a spy.”

Abdullah says he was only in Iran two months before his detention, despite a visa.

“They hit us with plastic heroes and said:” You are a spy, you are destroying our country. “

In the four days in which he was held, “Poetry as if it were four years.” It describes continuous abuse, physical abuse and food shortages.

The allegations began online in cooperation between Afghans and Israeli secret services early in the war.

On June 13, on the day that Israel attacked Iranian nuclear and military installations, the government issued statements to the population, asking citizens to report suspicious activities such as the unusual movements of trucks, which may transport the weapons of Israeli activists.

Then TELEGRAM is transmitted with large followers warning messages using a similar formulation for the government. But they added that the population should be vigilant for “foreign citizens” – an expression often used to describe Afghans in Iran – the vehicles that lead in large cities.

The next day, a series of arrests of people who claim Israeli attacks, including some Afghans, was reported.

On June 16, news channels broadcast a video of the Afghans who were arrested claiming that they were carrying drones with them. Viral gold. But the video was old, and the detained immigrants depicted because of their unconfirmed situation.

On June 18, a telegram group attributed to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps published that 18 Afghans were arrested in the city of Manshad to build drones for Israel, according to the Afghan Independent Monitoring Group.

The next day, the province’s deputy head of security was quoted, saying that the arrest was “not related to the manufacture of drones” or cooperating with Israel. “They were only arrested because they are in Iran illegally.”

But the posts that link the arrests to spy have spread widely on social media platforms. The retail brand that says “Afghan’s expulsion is a national demand” more than 200,000 times on X within one month, as it reached its peak in more than 20,000 mentioned on July 2.

The anti -Afghan feelings on Iranian social media are not new, but the difference this time is “the wrong information not only comes from social media users but from the Iranian affiliate media,” according to an independent researcher in Afghan witnessed.

More than 1.5 million Afghans have left Iran since January, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. A spokesman for the Taliban Ministry of Refugees and returning to the Taliban said that more than 918,000 Afghan entered Afghanistan from Iran between June 22 – July 22.

Some were in Iran for generations.

Millions of Afghans have fled Iran and Pakistan since the 1970s, with large waves during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and recently in 2021, when the Taliban returned to power.

Experts warn that Afghanistan lacks the ability to absorb the increasing number of citizens who forcefully returned to a country under the rule of the Taliban. The country is already struggling with a large flow of returnees from Pakistan, also forcing hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave.

Initially, Afghans were welcomed in Iran, says Dr. Khadia Abbasi, a specialist in forced displacement at the College of Oriental and African Studies in London. However, the anti -Ferghan feelings gradually increased, as government media depicted Afghan refugees as a “economic burden” of society, she says.

False accounts of Afghan immigrants in Iran followed.

In the 1990s, a series of rape and killing in Tehran was widely supposed to be an Afghan act, which led to a rise in hate crimes. It was later revealed that the killer was Iranian.

When an estimated two million Afghans migrated to Iran in the post -2011 wave, exaggerated publications on social media claimed that more than 10 million Afghans were living in the country. Iran was the only neighbors to allow refugees and migrants to enter widely during that time.

Dr. Abbasi says that the expulsion of Afghans from Iran may be one of the very rare issues that most Iranians are compatible with the government – although more than 1,300 Iranian and Afghan activists have made an open speech calling for some extent to treat “inhuman” for Afghan citizens in Iran.

Today, the anti -Ferghan feelings are widespread. “It has become very dangerous, so people will try to stay at home,” she says.

For huge numbers that are no longer an option. The boundaries continue to swell with people.

For Abdullah, the deportation destroyed his plans.

“I lost everything,” he says.

Written by Babrak Ehsas, Yasin Rasouli, Rowan Inings and SUCHEERA MAGUIRI, with additional reports by Soroush Pakzad