Afghans in Iran
[6][7] They are under the care and protection of the UNHCR,[8][4] and are provided time-limited legal status by Iran's Bureau of Aliens and Foreign Immigrant Affairs,[3] without a path to obtain permanent residency.
During the early 19th century, the Persian army invaded Herat several times but with British assistance the Afghans quickly expelled them.
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.
[26] 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.
They issued them "blue cards" to denote their status, entitling them to free primary and secondary education, as well as subsidised healthcare and food.
[25] By 1992, a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there were around 2.8 million Afghans in Iran.
[27] For their efforts in housing and educating these refugees and illegals, the Iranian government received little financial aid from the international community.
[34][15] Afghanistan's Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation has acknowledged that approximately 3 million Afghan citizens still remain in Iran as of January 2023.
[36] 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.
[39] 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 very changes from which they had hoped to shield their families.
This shift in family and gender roles was induced by the experience of living as refugees in largely Muslim society.
[citation needed] In 2020, a new policy allowing Iranian women to pass down their citizenship to their children at birth started to effect.
[46] The Iranian government has also failed to take necessary steps to protect its Afghan population from physical violence linked to rising anti-refugee sentiment in Iran, or to hold those responsible accountable.
The Iranian government has also imposed a number of restrictions, including the ban on the use of foreign workers in governmental and non-governmental organizations, and called on all government agencies, non-state actors, companies and contractors to provide their needed labor to Iranian workforce, with numerous penalties, including imprisonment and a fine for the offending employers.
However, many employers prefer to hire Afghans due their low wage expectations, lack of insurance requirements, and their high productivity.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has recruited and coerced thousands of undocumented Afghans living in the Islamic Republic to fight in Syria since at least November 2013.
The Islamic Republic has urged the Afghan refugees to defend Shia sacred sites and offered financial incentives to encourage them to join pro-Syrian government militias.
Their training is very short – a fortnight of tactical movement and basic weapons handling – all conducted in strict secrecy.
[59] According to Amir Toumaj, a researcher with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Fatemiyoun was recently upgraded from a brigade to a division, which normally numbers over 10,000.
The Abolfazli mosque in eastern Mashhad's Golshahr district – situated at the heart of an impoverished area accommodating most of the city's Afghans – is the place where the refugees, usually young men, sign up on a daily basis to go and fight for Iran in Syria.
Some groups said that boys as young as 13 have been induced to fight and that recruits received brief training and often suffered heavy casualties.
One early example is Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 1988 movie The Cyclist, in which the character of the title, a former cycling champion of Afghanistan, gives a demonstration in his town's square whereby he rides his bicycle without stopping for seven days and seven nights, with the aim of raising money for life-saving surgery for his wife.
[71] 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.
[28] 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.
