RIGHTS-IRAN: Some Afghans Return Home, Others Stay Put

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ramin Mostaghim

TEHRAN, Jul 18 2003 (IPS) - Mohammad Saber, one of several men crowding the Afghan embassy here, sighs and says that if he could get even a glass of tea and loaf of bread with what he makes back home, he would not have crossed the border to Iran.

”If I were sure of that, I would have never overstayed here for even an hour,” he says. ”Alas, still we cannot find even subsistence living in our war-torn homeland," adds the 53-year-old man, who has been working as a garbage collector in District 5 in Tehran.

Hailing from Faizabad, the centre of Badakhshan province in north-east Afghanistan, Saber left his five children and sneaked into Iran to flee political instability and hardship.

He is at the embassy to try to get someone to help him demand that his employer pays him and 36 other Afghan wage labourers their wages for three months’ work. Their employer in the municipality district did not feel obliged to pay them their salaries after laying them off, since they did not have legal status.

Unlike him, however, most of the others at the embassy – Tajiks, Hazaris and Pashtuns – are preparing to go back to Afghanistan. They are lining up to receive repatriation forms and certificates that would allow them to be registered as refugees under the United Nations, and leave Iran as such.

They can then go to Sulaimankhani refugee camp west of Tehran airport to receive 10 U.S. dollars per head as pocket money, and get a free ride to a border camp in Khorasan province, east of Iran, prior to going home.

Without this kind of registration, they risk being arrested on the spot and deported any time.

More than a fourth of the 2.52 million Afghans in Iran have returned to Afghanistan since the Taliban fell in November 2001, according to official figures. But some people like Saber want to stay back after years or decades of managing to survive here.

Like him, Abdulgader Rahmani, an old Hazari clergyman who took refuge in this country, says he misses Afghanistan. ”After 20 years of living in Iran, still we miss our home but I do not possess anything, no land no garden, nothing in Afghanistan to return.”

So ”although I am in poverty here, I prefer to stay more in Iran than return home,” adds the 64-year-old Rahmani, who stays in the holy city of Qom, some 150 kilometres south of Tehran. He has four sons, who work as semi-skilled labourers in Qom, and two daughters.

Saber and Rahmani feel this way even though life in Iran is far from ideal. In this country, Afghans are often in menial, low-paying jobs, do not have permanent homes and if undocumented, have little recourse through the law.

”Afghans are looked down in public places, especially in taxis and buses, but they patiently bear the abuses and timidly lead hard lives,” says Rozbeh Kasravi, a sociologist at a vocational school near Abdulabad village on the way to Qom.

Farrukh Mojab, a former professor in Farsi literature who works as legal adviser to Afghans who come to the embassy, adds that it has been difficult for Afghans to seek protection under the country’s laws.

”In any lawsuit raised in court, Afghan people are the losers. The authorities in Iran do not listen to their complaints and are more concerned that they return home,” Mojab says in an interview.

He cites the instance of a rape some three months ago of a seven-year-old Afghan girl at the Asgarabad refugee camp east of Iran. The accused rapists, three young Iranian boys, were not even summoned to court, he adds.

Then there is the state of uncertainty many live with, day in and day out. Refugees cannot own houses, vehicles, motorcycles and the like, but only smaller items like record players, television sets and cookers, says Qazi Ehsanuhaq Ehsan, second secretary at the Afghan embassy.

”They cannot even open bank accounts, so they either save their money in their pillows or ask their Iranian trustworthy friends to keep their savings until they return home,” he adds.

Yet even these hurdles have not prevented many Afghan refugees from saving up some amounts.

Gholam Hazrat’s brother Davoud left Iran and went back to Afghanistan after 15 years to join the Afghan national army, but he himself has remained in the country.

He is delaying his return because here, at least he is able to make 120 dollars from shoeshining and mending. That amount may not be much elsewhere, but that monthly average wage for manual work in Iran is much more than the 40 dollar a month average in Afghanistan.

Gholam has already saved around 2,000 U.S. dollars and his friend, Abbas Arjmand, an economist and journalist, keeps the money for him in his own bank account. ”Economists in Iran estimate that on average, every Afghan in Iran has saved 2,000 dollars in his or her pillow,” Arjmand adds.

”Once their country is able to digest their savings, you can imagine the positive impact these savings can make in Afghanistan," he points out.

But for now, there continues to be resentment of the Afghans, says Alireza Mahjoub, the representative of the Iranian workers’ community in parliament. ”Afghan refugees still enjoy good wages in their host country, Iran, but that (also) diminishes the competitive power of Iranian unskilled and semi-skilled workers,” Mahjoub says.

”That is the reason behind the abuses Afghan refugees receive in poor areas,” Mahjoub adds.

Still, some Iranians say the fact remains that hosting Afghan refugees has also brought economic benefits to the country. ”Afghan refugees’ working hard as beavers make them adaptable verywhere in Iran,” says Maziyar Hasanzadeh, a successful builder in Tehran and many provincial towns.

”In fact, they have played important roles in building and development projects and have sustained hundreds of casualties due to occupational hazards. They enjoy no social security, insurance or medical care,” he adds.

”It is true that they do not pay any tax, but on the hand, they do not receive any help, except subsidised bread, which they are entitled to have,” Hasanzadeh points out.