While many Iranians took to the streets to celebrate the end of the short but dramatic 12-day war with Israel in June, Abdullatif, 23, couldn’t join the joyful crowds. As an undocumented Afghan in Iran, he couldn’t risk running into the Iranian security forces, whose presence was heavier than usual.
“I’m afraid they’ll arrest me as a spy. I can’t leave the house,” he told
Foreign Policy at the time. Abdullatif was referring to the common claim that Afghans collaborate with the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. In the 12 days following Israel’s large-scale attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities on June 13, more than 700 people were extracted from Afghans among them, creating fertile ground to accelerate what has become one of the biggest mass deportation campaigns in modern history.
For more than four decades, Iran provided refuge to millions of Afghans fleeing conflict and the poverty of their own country, creating the largest Afghan diaspora and one of the biggest refugee populations in the world. The estimated number of refugees currently residing in Iran ranges from around
4 million to
6 million, according to Iranian officials—the vast majority of them from Afghanistan.
On June 24, Abdullatif became one of more than
half a million Afghans deported since the war’s start. Many were
brutally taken—seized by security forces at home, sometimes while asleep, at workplaces, or at mosques, with families
torn apart in the process.
Abdullatif was arrested outside the bakery where he’d been buying bread. “The Iranian police treated us extremely badly,” he recalled, speaking to
Foreign Policy from his family home in Kabul. “They took me to a refugee camp where they beat us and kept us hungry and thirsty. Those who gave money to the Iranian police were able to leave easily. After a lot of beatings, I paid 3 million tomans and was deported. They tore up my passport and humiliated us nonstop.” (The 3 million tomans, roughly $70, is a “municipality fee” Afghans have reportedly been asked to pay before deportation.)
Abdullatif’s story isn’t abnormal. According to Arafat Jamal, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative in Afghanistan, refugees arrive back in Afghanistan incredibly shaken. “At every step, more and more degrading things are happening to them,” Jamal said. “Everything from being woken up in the middle of the night to leave to having their belongings taken, having employers not paying salaries, landowners not refunding the deposit.”
Jamal monitors the situation at the Islam Qala border crossing in western Afghanistan’s Herat province, where thousands of forcibly returned Afghans cross every day. The recent deportations are unprecedented not only in
scale—around
1.6 million Afghans have been returned to Afghanistan from Iran in 2025 alone—but also in intensity. “That’s what makes it a humanitarian crisis,” Jamal said. “Normally, Islam Qala border sees around 5,000 to 7,000 crossings a day, but we’ve seen peaks of over 50,000. While it has somewhat stabilized at around 20,000, that’s still four times the normal capacity.”
Tehran has always imposed numerous restrictions even on Afghans with regulated status: They are allowed to settle only in certain provinces, work in specific sectors—mostly low-skilled and low-paid jobs—and face difficulties obtaining
bank cards or SIM cards, making it significantly harder to use public transport and pushing more people into the underground economy. The majority of those who fled to Iran after August 2021, when the Taliban returned to power, only obtained a
census slip allowing for temporary stay and limited access to basic services such as education and health care. As a result, many families are unable to legalize their stay, leaving them on the margins of society with no access to essential services.
Amid Iran’s
economic crisis, long-standing discriminatory and xenophobic anti-Afghan sentiment has become more prevalent, fueled by government officials’
rhetoric and echoed by many ordinary Iranians, from hateful
social media posts to
bakeries refusing to sell bread to Afghans.
Turning blame outward is a convenient outlet for public anger and official deflection, said Arash Azizi, a writer and historian who focuses on Iran. “It’s a replacement for people’s problems,” Azizi said. “People don’t have electricity, water, enough wages. They have shortages in goods, and the government says it’s because of Afghans.”
Worsening economic conditions are hitting the most vulnerable populations, including refugees, particularly hard. “Our work is hard, but the pay is low. With housing costs skyrocketing, do you think we had time to spread hatred or spy?” Sahar, a 24-year-old Afghan woman who lives in Iran with her mother and sister, asked via WhatsApp.
If mass deportations continue at this scale, they could backfire on the economy. Afghans
make up 65-75 percent of the agriculture, construction, and service workforce in Iran. Abrupt deportations drive up labor costs, disrupt supply chains, and shrink Iran’s informal economy—without addressing unemployment among educated Iranians, who typically avoid manual labor.
Despite present hardships, Sahar is more concerned about how her all-female household will survive if forced back to Afghanistan. “How will we stay safe if people find out that three women are living in a house without a father or brother?” she asked, alluding to the Taliban’s extreme restrictions on women and their movement.
U.N. experts have
strongly condemned the mass deportations of Afghans, who face “very real risks of persecution, threats, and violent reprisals.” Possible consequences could include arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and inhuman treatment “exacerbated by the Taliban’s restrictions on women humanitarian workers.”
Deportations of this scale also represent a threat to regional stability.
The de facto Taliban government, recognized only by Russia as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, is grappling with economic collapse and a humanitarian crisis made worse by Western sanctions and Trump administration
aid cuts. Receiving thousands of returnees—often arriving with nothing but the clothes on their backs—is a major challenge, said Suhail Shaheen, the head of the Taliban’s political office in Doha.
“The government has established around 13 committees to address all the essential needs, from transportation and registration to health services, education, and temporary shelter in the camps for a few days after their arrival,” he told
Foreign Policy.
With the Taliban’s resources stretched—spending cuts recently forced a
20 percent staff reduction across the public sector—international humanitarian assistance is crucial. According to Shaheen, the Taliban are lobbying the Iranian government to allow Afghans to return voluntarily, not force them out.
Funding cuts have forced major agencies such as UNHCR to drastically reduce their operations. The absence of international organizations normally present at the border is striking. “Normally, in an emergency, you see organizations setting up camps, providing shelter, food, non-food items, water, and emergency first aid. But this time, none of that was in place—only a few organizations were present on the ground,” said Maiwand Rohani, the CEO of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance, who works at Islam Qala.
It’s not just Iran that is deporting Afghans. Even European countries are exploring the possibility, with Germany recently
allowing two Taliban officials into the country to coordinate deportation flights. One such flight carrying 81 Afghan men, many of whom were
accused of violent crimes,
landed in Kabul on July 18.
To make matters worse, Pakistan is also accelerating its deportation program, launched in 2023, to expel all Afghans. This intensified effort—aiming to pressure Kabul over its inability to control the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, a Pakistani militant group that operates from Afghanistan—
risks fueling further cross-border insurgency.
“We are ready to accept our citizens, but this must be done under a proper framework,” Shaheen said. “Returnees need resettlement, employment opportunities, and in some cases medical treatment.”
Obaidullah Baheer, a transitional justice lecturer at the American University of Afghanistan, pointed out that with deportations at this scale, properly vetting individuals crossing the border is nearly impossible. Most returnees are likely to settle in already overcrowded, resource-stressed urban centers.
Mistreatment accompanying deportation and the dire economic situation at home may push returnees, especially young men, to join armed factions and militant groups operating in Afghanistan and conducting attacks on neighboring countries. “Countries deporting Afghans are trying to solve a short-term problem without considering the long-term consequences,” Baheer said. “It creates resentment, and even if someone doesn’t pick up arms themselves, they may become indifferent if others seek to harm a neighboring country. This is very dangerous for the entire region.”
Additionally, the demographic shock could disrupt Afghanistan’s fragile and recently regained stability. In a country of roughly 40 million people,
75 percent of the population lives at subsistence level.
Many Afghan returnees from both Iran and Pakistan were born abroad and have never set foot in the country before, making the environment almost alien to them. Smugglers exploited the crisis during the recent Israel-Iran war,
telling Afghans that they could cross into Turkey even though only Iranians with valid visas could enter. The market value of smuggling Afghans to Turkey was already
$178.4 million per year before the war.
Despite increasing hostility in neighboring countries and rising
pushback rates from Turkey, this trend of deportations is expected to continue and grow. For many Afghans, migration remains the only viable way to ensure their families’ survival. “Families are sending one, two, or even three young members—whichever they can afford—across borders, hoping they’ll reach Europe and be able to support their families back home,” said Ibraheem Bahiss, a senior Afghanistan analyst at International Crisis Group.
That’s the future Abdullatif—now living in Kabul with his impoverished older parents and siblings—envisions for himself. He has been considering paying a smuggler to take him on a perilous journey to Belarus and then Poland, where migrants experience
violent pushbacks at the border. Afghans are among the
largest groups attempting to cross the eastern European Union border, facing increasingly drastic security measures along the way.
Despite being aware of the risks and
deaths of his compatriots in the forests along the Poland-Belarus border, Abdullatif is still willing to take his chances. “I’m trying to leave Afghanistan by any means possible,” he said. “There is no hope or life for us here.”