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On Friday, June 13, when Israeli missiles began raining down on Tehran, Shamsi was reminded as soon as once more simply how susceptible she and her household are.
The 34-year-old Afghan mom of two was working at her stitching job in north Tehran. In a state of panic and concern, she rushed again dwelling to seek out her daughters, aged 5 and 7, huddled beneath a desk in horror.
Shamsi fled Taliban rule in Afghanistan only a yr in the past, hoping Iran would supply security. Now, undocumented and terrified, she finds herself caught in one more harmful state of affairs – this time with no shelter, no standing, and no approach out.
“I escaped the Taliban however bombs have been raining over our heads right here,” Shamsi advised Al Jazeera from her dwelling in northern Tehran, asking to be referred to by her first title solely, for safety causes. “We got here right here for security, however we didn’t know the place to go.”
Shamsi, a former activist in Afghanistan, and her husband, a former soldier within the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan earlier than the Taliban returned to energy in 2021, fled to Iran on a brief visa, frightened of reprisals from the Taliban over their work. However they’ve been unable to resume their visas due to the associated fee and the requirement to exit Iran and re-enter via Taliban-controlled Afghanistan – a journey that may possible be too harmful.
Life in Iran has not been straightforward. With out authorized residency, Shamsi has no safety at work, no checking account, and no entry to help. “There was no assist from Iranians, or from any worldwide organisation,” she mentioned.
Web blackouts in Tehran have made it onerous to seek out data or contact household.
“And not using a driver’s licence, we are able to’t transfer round. Each crossroad in Tehran is closely inspected by police,” she mentioned, noting that they managed to get round restrictions to purchase meals earlier than Israel began bombing, however as soon as that began it grew to become a lot tougher.
Iran hosts an estimated 3.5 million refugees and folks in refugee-like conditions, together with some 750,000 registered Afghans. However greater than 2.6 million are undocumented people. For the reason that Taliban’s return to energy and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, 1000’s of Afghans, together with activists, journalists, former troopers, and different susceptible individuals, have crossed into Iran looking for refuge.
Tehran province alone reportedly hosts 1.5 million Afghan refugees – nearly all of them undocumented – and as Israel focused websites in and across the capital, attacking civilian and army places throughout the 12-day battle, many Afghans have been starkly reminded of their excessive vulnerability – unprotected and unable to entry emergency help, and even dependable data throughout air raids because the internet was shut down for giant intervals of time.
Whereas many fled Tehran for the north of Iran, Afghan refugees like Shamsi and her household had nowhere to go.
On the night time of June 22, an explosion shook her neighbourhood, breaking the home windows of the household’s condominium. “I used to be awake till 3am, and simply an hour after I fell asleep, one other blast woke me up,” she mentioned.
A whole residential condominium was levelled close to her constructing. “I ready a bag with my kids’s predominant objects to be prepared if one thing occurs to our constructing.”
The June 23 ceasefire brokered by Qatar and the US got here as an enormous reduction, however now there are different issues: Shamsi’s household is nearly out of cash. Her employer, who used to pay her in money, has left the town and gained’t reply her calls. “He’s disappeared,” she mentioned. “After I [previously] requested for my unpaid wages, he simply mentioned: ‘You’re an Afghan migrant, get out, out, out.’”
The human price of battle
For all Afghans trapped in Iran – each these pressured to flee and people who stayed of their houses – the 12-day conflict with Israel has sharply reawakened emotions of trauma and displacement.
Moreover, in accordance with the Iranian well being authorities, three Afghan migrants – recognized as Hafiz Bostani, Abdulwali and Habibullah Jamshidi – have been among the many 610 individuals killed within the latest strikes.
On June 18, 18-year-old Afghan labourer Abdulwali was killed and several other others have been injured in an Israeli strike on their building website within the Tehranpars space of Tehran. In response to the sufferer’s father, Abdulwali left his research in Afghanistan about six months in the past to work in Iran to feed his household. In a video extensively shared by Abdulwali’s buddies, his colleagues on the building website will be heard calling to him to depart the constructing as loud explosions echo within the background.
Different Afghans are nonetheless lacking because the Israeli strikes. Hakimi, an aged Afghan man from Takhar province in Afghanistan, advised Al Jazeera that he hadn’t heard from three of his grandsons in Iran for 4 days. “They have been caught inside a building website in central Tehran with no meals,” he mentioned.
All he is aware of is that they retreated to the basement of the unfinished condominium constructing they have been engaged on after they heard the sound of bombs, he defined. The retailers close by have been closed, and their Iranian employer has fled the town with out paying wages.
Even when they’ve survived, he added, they’re undocumented. “In the event that they get out, they may get deported by police,” Hakimi mentioned.
From one hazard zone to a different
Through the battle, UN Particular Rapporteur Richard Bennett urged all events to guard Afghan migrants in Iran, warning of great dangers to their security and calling for instant humanitarian safeguards.
Afghan activist Laila Forugh Mohammadi, who now lives exterior the nation, is utilizing social media to boost consciousness in regards to the dire circumstances Afghans are dealing with in Iran. “Individuals can’t transfer, can’t communicate,” she mentioned. “Most don’t have any authorized paperwork, and that places them in a harmful place the place they will’t even retrieve unpaid wages from fleeing employers.”
She additionally flagged that amid the Iran-Israel battle, there is no such thing as a authorities physique supporting Afghans. “There’s no paperwork to course of their state of affairs. We dreaded an escalation within the violence between Iran and Israel for the protection of our individuals,” she mentioned.
Ultimately, those that did handle to evacuate from essentially the most harmful areas in Iran principally did so with the assistance of Afghan organisations.
The Afghan Girls Activists’ Coordinating Physique (AWACB), a part of the European Organisation for Integration, helped lots of of ladies – a lot of whom fled the Taliban due to their activist work – and their households to flee. They relocated from high-risk areas like Tehran, Isfahan and Qom – the websites of key nuclear amenities which Israel and the US each focused – to safer cities comparable to Mashhad within the northeast of the nation. The group additionally helped with speaking with households in Afghanistan throughout the ongoing web blackouts in Iran.
“Our capability is restricted. We are able to solely assist official members of AWACB,” mentioned Dr Patoni Teichmann, the group’s founder, talking to Al Jazeera earlier than the ceasefire. “Now we have evacuated 103 girls out of our current 450 members, most of whom are Afghan girls’s rights activists and protesters who rallied in opposition to the women’s education ban and fled Afghanistan.”
‘I can’t return to the Taliban’
Iran lately introduced plans to deport as much as two million undocumented Afghans, however throughout the 12-day battle, some took the choice to maneuver again anyway regardless of the risks and hardships they might face there.
World Imaginative and prescient Afghanistan reported that, all through the 12-day battle, roughly 7,000 Afghans have been crossing every day from Iran into Afghanistan by way of the Islam Qala border in Herat. “Persons are arriving with solely the garments on their backs,” mentioned Mark Cal, a discipline consultant. “They’re traumatised, confused, and returning to a homeland nonetheless in financial and social freefall.”
The Workplace of the UN Excessive Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has voiced grave issues in regards to the deteriorating humanitarian state of affairs for Afghans in Iran, including that it’s monitoring studies that individuals are on the transfer inside Iran and that some are leaving for neighbouring international locations.
Whilst Israeli strikes got here to a halt, tensions stay excessive, and the variety of Afghans fleeing Iran is predicted to rise.
However for a lot of, there may be nowhere left to go.
Again in northern Tehran, Shamsi sits beside her daughter watching an Iranian information channel. “We got here right here for security,” she says softly. Requested what she would do if the state of affairs worsens, Shamsi doesn’t hesitate: “I’ll keep right here with my household. I can’t return to the Taliban.”
This piece was printed in collaboration with Egab.
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