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Friday, June 13, when Israeli missiles began to rain in TehranShamsi remembered once again how vulnerable she and her family are.
The 34 -year -old Afghan mother worked at her sewing work in the north of Tehran. In a state of panic and fear, she rushed to her house to find her daughters, aged five and seven, nestled under a horror table.
Shamsi fled the Taliban to Afghanistan just a year ago, hoping Iran would offer security. Now, undocumented and terrified, she finds herself taken in another dangerous situation – this time homeless, without status and dead end.
“I escaped the Taliban but bombs were raining on our heads here,” said Shamsi in Al Jazeera from his home in the north of Tehran, asking to be referred by his first name only, for security reasons. “We came here for security, but we didn’t know where to go.”
Shamsi, a former activist in Afghanistan, and her husband, a former soldier of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan before the Taliban returned to power in 2021, fled to Iran on a temporary visa, fearing reprisals of the Taliban during their work. But they were unable to renew their visas due to the cost and the requirement to leave Iran and return through Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban – a trip that would probably be too dangerous.
Life in Iran was not easy. Without legal residence, Shamsi has no protection at work, no bank accounts and no access to aid. “There was no help from Iranians or an international organization,” she said.
Internet breakdowns in Tehran were difficult to find information or contact the family.
“Without driving license, we cannot move. Each crossroads in Tehran is strongly inspected by the police,” she said, noting that they had managed to get around the restrictions to buy food before Israel started to bombBut once it started, it has become much more difficult.
Iran welcomes approximately 3.5 million refugees and people in refugee -type situations, including some 750,000 Afghans registered. But more than 2.6 million are undocumented individuals. Since the return of the Taliban to power and the American withdrawal of Afghanistan in 2021, thousands of Afghans, including activists, journalists, former soldiers and other vulnerable people, have crossed Iran in search of refuge.
The province of Tehran alone will welcome 1.5 million Afghan refugees – the majority of them undocumented – and as a targeted sites in and around the capital, attacking civil and military places during the 12 -day conflict, many Afghans have been clarified of their rags extremely unprotected and unprotected and unprotected Internet has been closed For large periods.
While many fled Tehran for northern Iran, Afghan refugees like Shamsi and his family had nowhere to go.
On the night of June 22, an explosion shook its neighborhood, breaking the windows of the family’s apartment. “I was awake until 3 am, and only an hour after I sleep, another explosion woke me up,” she said.
An entire residential apartment was leveled near its building. “I have prepared a bag with the main articles of my children to be ready if something happens to our building.”
June 23 ceasefire Broked by Qatar and the United States have been a huge relief, but now there are other problems: Shamsi’s family is almost short of money. Her employer, who paid her in cash, left the city and will not answer his calls. “He has disappeared,” she said. “When I (previously) asked for my unpaid wages, he just said:” You are an Afghan migrant, go out, go out, outside. “”
The human cost of conflict
For all Afghans trapped in Iran – both those forced to flee and those who stayed at home – the 12 -day conflict With Israel, the feelings of trauma and displacement have suddenly awakened.
In addition, according to Iranian health authorities, three Afghan migrants – identified as Hafiz Bostani, Abdulwali and Habibullah Jamshidi – were one of the 610 people killed in recent strikes.
On June 18, the 18 -year -old Afghan worker Abdulwali was killed and several others were injured during an Israeli strike on their construction site in the Teherane region in Tehran. According to the victim’s father, Abdulwali left his studies in Afghanistan about six months ago to work in Iran to feed his family. In a video widely shared by Abdulwali’s friends, his colleagues on the construction site can be heard to leave him to leave the building while strong echo explosions in the background.
Other Afghans have always been missing from the Israeli strikes. Hakimi, an elderly Afghan man in Takhar province in Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera that he had not heard of three of his grandsons in Iran for four days. “They were stuck in a construction site for the center of Tehran without food,” he said.
All he knows is that they withdrew in the basement of the unfinished building on which they worked when they heard the sound of the bombs, he explained. The nearby stores were closed and their Iranian employer fled the city without paying wages.
Even if they have survived, he added, they are undocumented. “If they go out, they will be expelled by the police,” said Hakimi.
From one danger area to another
During the conflict, Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur, urged all parties to protect Afghan migrants in Iran, warning serious risks to their safety and calling for immediate humanitarian guarantees.
The Afghan activist Laila Foruugh Mohammadi, who now lives outside the country, uses social media to raise awareness of the disastrous conditions that Afghans are confronted in Iran. “People cannot move, cannot speak,” she said. “Most have no legal documents, which places them in a dangerous position where they cannot even recover unpaid wages to flee employers.”
She also pointed out that in the middle of the Iran-Israel conflict, no government body supports Afghans. “There is no bureaucracy to deal with their situation. We feared an escalation in the violence between Iran and Israel for the security of our people,” she said.
In the end, those who have managed to evacuate the most dangerous areas of Iran mainly did it with the help of Afghan organizations.
The body for coordinating Afghan activists (AWACB), which is part of the European organization for integration, has helped hundreds of women – many of whom fled the Taliban because of their work as activists – and their families to flee. They have moved to high -risk areas like Tehran, Isfahan and Qom – the sites of the main nuclear facilities that Israel and the United States have both targeted – to safer cities such as Mashhad in the northeast of the country. The group also helped to communicate with families in Afghanistan during Internet failures in Iran in Iran.
“Our ability is limited. We cannot argue that official AWACB members,” said Dr. Patoni Teichmann, the group’s founder, addressing Al Jazeera before the ceasefire. “We have evacuated 103 women from our 450 existing members, most of whom are militants of the rights of Afghan women and demonstrators who gathered against the Prohibition of education for women And fled to Afghanistan. »»
‘I can’t go back to the Taliban’
Iran recently announced its intention to expel up to two million undocumented Afghans, but during the 12 -day conflict, some made the decision to go back despite the dangers and the difficulties they could face.
World Vision, Afghanistan reported that, throughout the 12 -day war, around 7,000 Afghans crossed Iran daily in Afghanistan via the border of Islam Qala in Herat. “People arrive with only clothes on their backs,” said Mark Cal, representing on the ground. “They are traumatized, confused and return to a homeland still in free and social fall.”
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expressed serious concerns concerning the deterioration of the humanitarian situation of the Afghans in Iran, adding that he was monitoring the reports that people are in Iran and that some leave for neighboring countries.
Even if the Israeli strikes have stopped, the tensions remain high and the number of Afghans fleeing Iran should increase.
But for many, there is anywhere where to go.
Back in the north of Tehran, Shamsi sits next to his daughter looking at an Iranian news channel. “We came here for security,” she said gently. Asked what she would do if the situation gets worse, Shamsi doesn’t hesitate: “I’m going to stay here with my family. I can’t go back to the Taliban.”
This play was published in collaboration with Egab.
