Afghans in Iran

This article is about citizens of Afghanistan living in Iran. For Pashtuns in Iran, see Pashtun diaspora#Pashtuns in the Middle East.

Afghans in Iran

Total population
935,600 (2010)
Regions with significant populations
Sizeable populations in Tehran, Zabol, the outskirts of Mashhad, and around the Afghanistan-Iran border
Languages
Persian Farsi, Persian Dari, Hazaragi, Pashto and Turkmen
Religion
Islam (Sunni and Shia)

Afghans in Iran are mostly refugees who fled Afghanistan during the 1980s Soviet war as well as diplomats, traders, businesspersons, workers, exchange students, tourists and other visitors. As of March 2009, nearly 1 million Afghan nationals were reported to be living in Iran. The ones designated as refugees are under the protection and care of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and provided legal status by the Government of Iran. However, they cannot obtain Iranian citizenship or permanent residency, and live in Iran under time-limited condition of stay.

Although Iran opened its border gates to millions of fleeing Afghans from the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the subsequent civil war, the current Iranian government under President Ahmadinejad has been less receptive toward them in recent years. About 100,000 Afghans were forcibly deported in 2007. In May 2010, a number of Afghans were executed by being hanged in the streets of Iran, which sparked angry demonstrations in Afghanistan.

Political history and migration

Further information: Afghanistan–Iran relations

A miniature from Padshahnama depicting the surrender of the Persian Safavid garrison of Kandahar in 1638 to the Mughals, which was re-taken by the Persians in 1650 during the Mughal-Safavid war.

As neighbouring countries with cultural links, there has been a long history of population movements between Iran and Afghanistan. Southern Afghanistan was controlled by the Persian Safavid dynasty until 1709 when Mirwais Hotak, founder of the Hotaki dynasty, declared it independent. Ahmad Shah Durrani and his Afghan army conquered the Khorasan and Kohistan provinces of Iran. The regions became part of the Afghan Empire until 1800 when Mohammad Khan Qajar, founder of the Qajar dynasty, took possession. During the early 19th century, the Persians invaded Herat several times but the Afghans managed to repel them. In 1850s, when Persian forces invaded Herat in Afghanistan for the last time, communities made up of 2,000 and 5,000 households of ethnic Hazaras were formed in Torbat-e Jam and Bakharz in what is now Iran.

During the 1880-1901 reign of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, Sunni repression against Shi'as led to intensified flight in Afghanistan by the largely Shia Hazara people; roughly 15,000 families totaling 168,000 people settled at Torbat-e Jam near Mashhad. Afghan migrant workers, pilgrims and merchants, who settled in Iran over the years, had by the early 20th century, become large enough to be officially classified as their own ethnic group, referred to variously as Khavari or Barbari. Young Hazara men have embraced migrant work in Iran and other Persian Gulf states in order to save money for marriage and become independent; such work has even come to be seen as a "rite of passage". Such migration intensified in the early 1970s due to famine, and by 1978, there were an estimated several hundred thousand Afghan migrant workers in Iran.

The Soviet war in Afghanistan, which erupted in 1979, was the beginning of a series of major waves of refugee flight from Afghanistan. Those who came to Iran augmented the ranks of migrant workers already there. The new Islamic Republic of Iran recognized all Afghan migrants as refugees. They issued them "blue cards" to denote their status, entitling them to free primary and secondary education, as well as subsidized healthcare and food. However, the government maintained some restrictions on their employment, namely prohibiting them from owning their own businesses or working as street vendors.

Most of the early academic attention on these new immigrants was focused on ethnically Pashtun Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Studies on Afghans in Iran came later due to the political situation during the Iran–Iraq War. By 1992, a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there were around 2.8 million Afghans in Iran. Just 10% were housed in refugee camps; most settled in or near urban areas. For their efforts in housing and educating these refugees, the Iranian government received little financial aid from the international community. With the fall of the Najibullah government of Afghanistan in 1992, Iran began efforts to encourage refugees to repatriate. During these years, there were many cases of refugees being harassed by Iranian law enforcement officers. Legal residents had their identity cards confiscated and exchanged with temporary residency permits of one-month validity, at the expiry of which they were expected to have left Iran and have repatriated.

UNHCR repatriation program

Since early 2002, more than 5 million Afghans have been repatriated through the UNHCR from both Pakistan and Iran back to their native country, Afghanistan. 935,600 were still remaining according to the UNHCR. Between 2010 and 2011, a total of 24,000 Afghan refugees left Iran and returned to Afghanistan.

Social life and other issues

Afghan boys in Isfahan, Iran.

The Afghan refugees have come to Iran since the 1980s, which included children and adolescents. Many were born in Iran over the last 30 years but unable to gain citizenship due to the Iranian law on immigration. The refugees include Hazaras, Pashtuns, Tajiks, and other ethnic groups of Afghanistan. One UNHCR paper claims that nearly half the documented refugees are Hazara, a primarily Shi'a group.

In Afghanistan, some people feel that using birth control violates the tenets of their religion; however, in Iran, attitudes are far different, due to the country's extensive promotion of family planning. Afghans in Iran have moved closer to mainstream Iranian values in this regard; the Iranian influence has even filtered back into Afghanistan. One study in Khorasan has found that while overall fertility rates for Afghan migrant women are somewhat higher than those for Iranian women there—3.9 vs. 3.6—the similarity hides significant age-related differences in fertility, with older Afghan migrant women having a far higher number of children than older Iranian urban women, while younger Afghan migrant women's number of children appears to be approaching the far-lower Iranian urban norm. Contraceptive usage among the same study group was 55%, higher than for local Iranian women.

More broadly, the same conservative men who resisted aggressive attempts by communist governments in Afghanistan to expand women's education and their role in the economy, are now faced with the precise changes from which they had hoped to shield their families. Even more ironically, this shift in family and gender roles was induced by the experience of living as refugees in largely Muslim society.

Thousands of Afghan men married Iranian women during their residence in Iran; however, under Iranian nationality law, the children of such marriages are not recognised as Iranian citizens, and it is also more difficult for the men to gain Iranian citizenship than for Afghan women married to Iranian men.

In popular culture

Since the 1980s, a number of Iranian movies set in Iran have featured Afghan immigrant characters. One early example is Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 1988 movie The Bicyclist, in which the character of the title, a former Afghan cycling champion, gives a demonstration in his town's square where he rides his bicycle without stopping for seven days and seven nights, with the aim of raising money for life-saving surgery for his son. In the end, even after seven days, he continues to pedal endlessly, too fatigued to hear his son's pleas to get off his bicycle. One scholar analyses the film as an allegory which parallels the exploitation that Afghan refugees suffer from in Iran and from which they are unable to escape.

Other notable films with Afghan characters include Jafar Panahi's 1996 The White Balloon, Abbas Kiarostami's 1997 A Taste of Cherry, Majid Majidi's 2000 Baran, and Bahram Bayzai's 2001 Sagkoshi.

Notable people

Iranian cleric of Afghan origin, Mohammad Fazel Lankarani, campaigned for liberalisation of Afghanistan for many years

• Jalaleddin Farsi, former candidate for the presidency of Iran, born to an Afghan father
• Valy, Afghan singer born in Mashhad
• Mohammad Fazel Lankarani, late Iranian cleric was maternally Afghan.

See also

• Afghan diaspora
• Afghanistan–Iran relations

References

Sources

• Moin, Baqer (1999), Khomeini: life of the Ayatollah, I. B. Tauris, ISBN 978-1-85043-128-2 
• Hoodfar, Homa (2004), "Families on the Move: the Changing Role of Afghan Refugee Women in Iran", Hawwa 2 (2): 141–171, doi:10.1163/1569208041514707 
• Piran, Parviz (2004), "Effects of Social Interaction between Afghan Refugees and Iranians on Reproductive Health Attitudes", Disasters 28 (3): 283–293, doi:10.1111/j.0361-3666.2004.00259.x 
• Adelkhah, Fariba; Olszewska, Zuzanna (2007), "The Iranian Afghans", Iranian Studies 40 (2): 137–165, doi:10.1080/00210860701269519 
• Glazebrook, Diana; Abbasi-Shavazi, Mohammad Jalal (2007), "Being Neighbors to Imam Reza: Pilgrimage Practices and Return Intentions of Hazara Afghans Living in Mashhad, Iran", Iranian Studies 40 (2): 187–201, doi:10.1080/00210860701269535 
• Moghadas, Ali Asghar; Vaezzade, Sajede; Aghajanian, Akbar (2007), "Fertility and Family Planning Among Immigrant Afghan Women in an Iranian City: A Research Note", Sociation Today 5 (1), ISSN 1542-6300, http://www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v51/akbar.htm 
• Zahedi, Ashraf (2007), "Transnational Marriages, Gendered Citizenship, and the Dilemma of Iranian Women Married to Afghan Men", Iranian Studies 40 (2): 225–239, doi:10.1080/00210860701269568 
• Hoodfar, Homa (2008), "The Long Road Home: Adolescent Afghan Refugees in Iran Contemplate 'Return'", in Hart, Jason, Years of Conflict: Adolescence, Political Violence and Displacement, Berghahn Books, ISBN 978-1-84545-528-6 
• Abbasi-Shavazi, Mohammad Jalal; Glazebrook, Diana; Jamshidiha, Gholamreza; Mahmoudian, Hossein; Sadeghi, Rasoul (April 2008), Second-generation Afghans in Iran: Integration, Identity and Return, Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, UNHCR, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/4846b2062.pdf, retrieved 2010-05-17 
• Islamic Republic of Iran, Country operations profiles, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2010, http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/page?page=49e486f96, retrieved 2010-03-15 

Further reading

• Olszewska, Zuzanna (2007), "'A Desolate Voice': Poetry and Identity among Young Afghan Refugees in Iran", Iranian Studies 40 (2): 203–224, doi:10.1080/00210860701269550 
• Tober, Diane (2007), "'My Body Is Broken Like My Country': Identity, Nation, and Repatriation among Afghan Refugees in Iran", Iranian Studies 40 (2): 263–285, doi:10.1080/00210860701269584 
• Kutschera, Chris, "Forgotten Refugees: Afghans in Iran", The Middle East 45 (92): 43–47 

External links

• Afghans in Iran: a photoessay by Samad Ali Moradi