A few hundred yards away, the images of both the assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his son, the newly crowned ayatollah, stare down at the reluctant and weary shuffling their way back to Afghanistan through the Islam Qala border crossing with Iran.
The wind kicks up dust and whips through the Iranian and Afghan flags as I watch the new arrivals along with staff from my charity, INARA, the International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance.
“Are you OK, do you speak English?” a young woman who just came through asks me. She’s with her family, her little brother perched atop their bags.
I’m utterly taken aback and moved by her concern for a stranger, especially after all they have been through, and assure her that I’m fine. She has no desire to return to Afghanistan, where the Taliban has banned girls from an education after the 6th grade.
“Girls in Afghanistan can’t go to school, you know,” she says, gripping my arm as I nod. “Our dreams are gone.”
For the family, it was a choice between crushing their two daughters’ dreams and staying alive. They chose the latter. Roughly 2,000 Afghans are crossing back to Afghanistan daily, around 70% of them women and children, according to the director of registration at the crossing, Abdul Ghani Ghazizada.
The reality facing returnees weighs on INARA’s CEO, Maiwand Rohani. While life in Iran offered economic and educational opportunities that Afghanistan does not, it was far from an easy existence. Most Afghans in Iran do not have legal status. They live in crumbling and decrepit buildings on the outskirts of major cities, their movements are heavily restricted and many are subjected to racism, discrimination and slurs like “Afghani kasif,” which translates to “you garbage Afghans.”
“Watching my people return, I feel a mix of hope and concern. Relief that perhaps at home, among their people, they can find dignity,” Maiwand says. “But part of me also wonders what kind of a future awaits them if their daughters cannot go to school and if they cannot fully participate in building their communities. Dignity is not only about returning home, it is about having the opportunity to build a meaningful life.”
It’s an opportunity that Afghanistan hardly affords its people. One father shows us his toddler’s hands. She was born with a birth defect, fused and deformed fingers. Surgery was too expensive in Iran, but he was working there and hoping to save up for it. When the bombs started falling, the Iranian family whose house they lived in as domestic help fled, leaving them no food or money.
Maiwand passes out the number for our team in Afghanistan so the families can call us. We clarify that we can’t promise anything, but we will do what we can. Out of all of the countries where INARA works, Afghanistan is the hardest to raise money for. It’s a widespread challenge; even the U.N.’s Humanitarian Response Plan for Afghanistan is only 10% funded, and the country is facing shock wave after shock wave.
Just last year, a massive earthquake displaced hundreds of thousands. Pakistan sent back around a million Afghans. And Iran, which hosts the largest number of Afghan refugees, forcibly returned 1.9 million, the vast majority not even allowed to properly pack up. They were abruptly and often brutally hauled out of their homes by Iranian security forces after the government accused them of collaborating with Israel after the 12-day war.
By contrast, what we’re witnessing at the border now is called “voluntary” return, although it’s hardly much of a choice when it comes down to survival.
“Our building was shaking. Our windows blew in. I thought, that’s it, we have to go,” one man tells us, cradling his youngest of three. They tried to go to his sister-in-law’s, but the kids were terrified and crying each time they heard an explosion. Plus, his wife is pregnant and due in a month. As we speak, she clutches her swollen belly and clenches her jaw as if she’s in pain.
“There’s a clinic around the corner, go get checked,” we tell her, cutting the conversation short.
There are scores of young men also arriving back, having gone to Iran to work and support their families back home.
“I would have stayed in Iran,” one tells us, “But all work stopped when the war began, and I couldn’t afford bread anymore. There is no point if I can’t make money.”
The conversation is brief. He rushes off with his friend to score one of the SIM cards being handed out to returnees for free, eager to make the call saying “I’m OK” to his parents now that he’s no longer impacted by the communications blackout in Iran that has kept families in agony over the fate of their loved ones.
But crashing up against the relief of being able to tell family members they are coming home is the reality of what they have given up: the ability to make money and feed those they are racing back to.
More than half the country lives under the poverty line and is reliant on humanitarian aid that doesn’t exist, and prices are already starting to rise due to the war with Iran. That night, as we zip around Herat, the closest city to the border and Afghanistan’s trade hub, we chat with our tuk-tuk driver. He’s beside himself. He just paid 20% more for fuel and says that prices for basic commodities like rice, flour and oil have gone up 10%.
“War just destroys everything. It also hurts poor people the most,” he says, sighing. It’s a reality Afghans have been living with for decades. They know painfully well that war doesn’t end when the bombs stop falling. It lives on in the destruction left behind, both physical and psychological, whether it’s happening in their country or next door.
Twelve-year-old Zakia, one of the cases that we at INARA support, is paralyzed with fear. Her mother is dead, killed in what the family had told us was a U.S. strike that hit their garden years ago. That same strike amputated Zakia’s leg. She and her older sister live with their uncle — their father went to work in Tehran.
We sit on a threadbare mattress on the floor of the small cement-walled living room, Zakia clenching her fingers so tightly her knuckles turn white, as if she believes that it can hold off the wave of anxiety that threatens to drown her.
“I haven’t heard from him,” she says softly, quiet tears rolling down her face. “I just want to know that he’s OK.”
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