Impoverished by war in Iran, Afghan migrants return to Taliban rule

Mohammad Saeed had just turned 18 when he fled to Iran with his parents and younger brother and sister, escaping the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan in 2021.

Now Saeed and his family are ​among thousands who have returned home to escape the economic crisis in Iran triggered by the conflict with the US and Israel.

The family came back nearly empty-handed, Saeed said.

"The Iranian currency had fallen so sharply," he said, that the family's ‌savings, held in Iranian rials, lost over two-thirds of their value.

For decades, Iran's industrialised and much larger economy offered Afghans an escape from poverty and, in the 1990s and again since 2021, from the harsh rule of the Taliban.

Now, Iran's economic struggles are such that many Afghans said they saw returning as their only option. They are coming back with their wives and daughters, despite the severe restrictions on women in Afghanistan, with curbs on their education, travel and employment.

Reuters journalists spent one week in the border regions of Afghanistan's Herat province and neighbouring Farah speaking to people returning from Iran. Free to discuss it without fear of Iranian government scrutiny, most of ​those returning described a shattered economy in Iran.

At the Islam Qala border crossing between Iran and Afghanistan, a near-constant flow of returning migrants were undergoing document checks and registration formalities.

Officials were sitting in makeshift shipping containers. Coming back to their homeland, the ​returnees were faced with barren desert mountains and a pothole-plastered highway, the road to Herat, the biggest city in western Afghanistan.

Most returning Afghans said they had been out of work for months and crushed by ⁠spiralling inflation before they decided to return.

Compounded by the impact of tightening sanctions and a US naval blockade that has recently left Iran without shipping any meaningful crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz, consumer prices have surged by nearly 90% year on year, according to Iran's Statistical Centre. Food inflation ​has been even higher, at almost 130%, making bread, milk and other essentials increasingly unaffordable.

Iran's mission in New York did not respond to a request for comment.

In the past, some Afghan salesmen could make profits in Iran's bazaars by selling goods at around double the price at which they'd ​been purchased, said Sayed Jawed Qazi Khani, a 40-year-old migrant. But inflation and vanishing savings among both Iranians and Afghan migrants led to a collapse in consumer demand.

"What remained was day labour," he said, often at the same wage as one year ago.

Only 29% of Afghans who recently returned from Iran said they had any savings left after their average income fell by nearly one-third compared to pre-crisis levels, according to surveys by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

More women return

More than 2 million Afghans have left Iran over the past two years. Most were deported or pressured to leave by Iranian authorities before the latest wave of returnees, who left amid ​the war, according to data from the UN Refugee Agency.

Forced deportation remains a leading reason why Afghans are returning, with unaccompanied men long appearing to be the primary focus of Iranian authorities. But compared to pre-crisis levels, the crowds of returning Afghans increasingly also include women and entire ​families, according to returnees and IOM data.

For many Afghan mothers and their daughters who had held out in Iran after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Iran's recent economic crisis has confronted them with an almost impossible choice: face poverty there, or return to a country where half the women leave home only once or ‌twice a month, according ⁠to the UN.

The Taliban's rules restrict women from travelling without male guardians and have barred them from some professions. The Taliban say they respect women's rights in accordance with Islamic sharia law.

Abdul Jabbar, 44, said he did not want to take his wife, two daughters, grandson and mother back to Afghanistan. Their family had lived in Iran for nearly four decades, and Jabbar had found work as an exterior finisher of buildings. The family had a comfortable life and a modern apartment in Kerman, near an Iranian military base.

His face flushed from the heat of the flatbread oven wedged into the one room they now have in Afghanistan, he said in an interview: "I used to say that even if Afghanistan was only two streets away, I would not go."

When the nearby military base was repeatedly hit by missiles and work dried up amid the war this year, Jabbar said, ​extended Afghan family members encouraged him to return, promising work and ​safety from American missiles.

When Jabbar arrived in Afghanistan with virtually no ⁠belongings or savings, relatives donated essentials and lent him money.

Two months on, he remains unemployed and, unable to repay the money, has worn out his welcome. The family now lives in a sweltering mud-brick house with only one room where solar panels are the sole source of electricity. The dusty carpet was donated.

His 15-year-old daughter Setayesh, who wants to become a fashion designer, misses her life in Iran.

"If I could, I would go ​back," she said. "For my education, my friends."

Restarting a cheese business

At Islam Qala, at least 20 to 40 families, including women and girls, return each day voluntarily, said Abdul Ghani Qazizadeh, a senior Taliban government ​official at the border.

"The wages they earn ⁠are no longer enough to cover their basic living expenses," he said.

Many Afghan workers complained that their Iranian employers were withholding wages, he said. "Everyone complains that their money has been left behind."

In Iran, Saeed and his mother, 42-year-old Rezwana Jami, said they had started a business producing cheese used in pizzas when they arrived in 2021. Initially, it thrived, and the family found loyal customers.

As US-Iran tensions escalated this year and inflation surged, food became so scarce that Jami said she struggled to source the ingredients needed for the business, including milk.

"I could no longer continue production," she said, eventually forcing the family to return ⁠five months ago.

Jami ​and Saeed said they have used their last savings to buy new kitchen equipment in Afghanistan and have resumed the production of pizza cheese in their new home.

The family ​sees a market opportunity in Afghanistan, where high-quality pizza cheese is a rare commodity. They say they work with girls who would be of school age in other countries, but are barred from education above sixth grade and from university under Taliban rules.

Since Jami's return to Afghanistan five months ago, she said her 17-year-old daughter has struggled the most.

"She keeps ​telling me, 'Mother, I studied for eight years, and now I’m just staying at home'," Jami said. "There is nothing I can do except telling her, 'Be patient. God is generous.'"