Iran kicks 1.5 million Afghan, with some brand spies for Israel

Ali Ahmad’s eyes are filled with tears when he lifts his shirt to show deep bruises on his back.

While he was detained, Iranian officers hit him and accused him of espionage, he says. “They used hoses, water pipes and wooden boards to defeat me. They treated us as animals.”

He talked to the BBC earlier this month in Islam Kala on the border of the two countries before going back to Afghanistan. His name was changed to protect his personality.

Iran – which states that it takes more than four million unregistered Afghans who have fled with a conflict in the homeland – for several months deportation. In March, those who did not have documents were granted a July term to come out voluntarily, but after a short war with Israel in June, the authorities forcibly returned hundreds of thousands of Afghans, claiming that national security issues.

Daily profitability reached a maximum of about 50,000 people in early July, according to the UN – often after heavy travel.

But Ahmad says Iranian officials confiscated their money and the phone and left it without “one penny to go back”. He lived in Iran for two and a half years.

Iran’s repression coincided with extensive allegations that associate Afghans with Israel’s intelligence agency, including Iranian media referring to police sources claiming that some people were arrested for espionage.

“We are afraid to go anywhere, constantly experiencing that we can be marked with spies,” said one person who wished to remain unknown, BBC News Afghan said.

“You, Afghans are spies,” “You work in Israel” or “You are building drones in your homes,” are other frequent accusations, the person reports.

Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan, who held the position of senior US Department of State, says Tehran can “look for goats” for his shortcomings in the war against Israel.

“The Iranian government is very embarrassed by its security failures,” Iran was very carefully penetrated in Israeli intelligence, “he says.

“So they had to find anyone who is guilty.”

Critics also say that espionage allegations are aimed at buying legitimacy for the government’s deportation plan for unregistered Afghans.

The BBC tried to contact the Iranian government but did not receive an answer. The return of Afghan refugees “without tensions and human rights …

Abdulla Reza, whose name has also changed, has a similar story with Ali Ahmad.

About 15 Iranian officers physically damaged him and other departments, Abdullah said in Islam Kala.

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

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

“They knocked us down with plastic batons and said,” You are a spy, you destroy our country. “

For four days he was detained “felt four years”. It describes the constant cruel treatment, physical cruelty and lack of food.

Internet accusations in cooperation between Afghans and Israeli secret services began at the beginning of the war.

On June 13, Israel attacked Iranian nuclear and military facilities on this day, the government made statements to the population, asking citizens to report suspicious activities such as unusual minibuses that can carry arms of Israeli operatives.

Then Telegram channels with great subsequent consequences placed warnings using a similar formulation with government. But they added that the population should be vigilant for “alien citizens” – an expression that is mainly used to describe Afghans in Iran – the control of minibuses in big cities.

The next day, a number of detentions of people who were allegedly related to Israeli attacks, including some Afghans, were reported.

On June 16, news channels broadcast video of Afghans who claimed to be transported drones. It was viral. But the video was old, and the migrants detained from their unregistered status were displayed.

On June 18, the Telegram group, attributed to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, published that 18 Afghans had been arrested in Mashad for the construction of drones for Israel, an independent Afghan monitoring group reports.

The next day, the Deputy Head of Security Province quotes the statement that the arrest “had no connection with the creation of drones” or cooperation with Israel. “They were arrested exclusively for illegally in Iran.”

But messages that connect arrests with espionage have spread widespread on social media platforms. The hashtag, which states that “expulsion of Afghanov is a national demand” was divided more than 200,000 times in X for a month, reaching a maximum of 20,000 mentions on July 2.

According to an independent researcher of the Afghan witness, anti-Afghan sentiment in Iranian social media is not new, but the difference is that “misinformation is not only from social media users, but also from Iranian media.”

More than 1.5 million Afghans have left Iran since January, the UN refugee news agency reports. The press secretary of the Ministry of Refugees and the Taliban repatriation told the BBC that more than 918,000 Afghans entered Afghanistan from Iran between June 22 to July 22.

Some were generations in Iran.

Millions of Afghans have fled to 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 opportunity to absorb an increasing number of citizens who forcibly returned to the country under the rule of the Taliban. The country is already fighting a large influx of return from Pakistan, which also causes hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave.

At first in Iran, he welcomed Afghanov, says D -Rus Obassi, who specializes in the forced movement at the School of Eastern and African Studies (SOAS) in London. But anti-Afghan moods increased gradually when state-owned media represent Afghan refugees as an “economic burden” for society, she says.

False stories about Afghan migrants in Iran followed this example.

In the 1990s, a number of rapes and killings in Tehran are widely assumed without evidence of Afghan work, which led to the rise in hatred. It was later revealed that the killer was Iran.

If, according to the estimated, two million Afghans moved to Iran in the wakes after 2021, exaggerated positions in social media stated that more than 10 million Afghans live in the country. Iran was the only neighbor who allowed refugees and migrants to enter the scale during this time.

The expulsion of Afghanov from Iran says that D -Ras Abasi “may become one of the very rare topics that most Iranians” are agreed with the government – although more than 1300 Iranian and Afghan activists signed an open letter in July calling for an “unbummer” treatment of Afghan citizens in Iran.

Today, anti-Afghan moods are widespread. “It became very dangerous,” she says, “so people will just try to stay home.”

For a huge amount, this is no longer an option. The border continues to gain people.

For Abdullah, deportation destroyed his plans.

“I lost everything,” he says.

By Babrak Ehsas, Yasin Rasouli, Rowan Ins and Suceera Maguire, with additional reporting Sorus