Iran ejects 1.5 million Afghans with some branded spies for Israel

Ali Ahmad’s eyes fill with tears as he lifts his shirt to show deep bruises on his back.

While he was detained, the Iranian officers hit him and accused him of spying, he says. “They used hoses, water supply and wooden boards to beat me. They treated us like animals.”

He spoke with the BBC earlier this month in ISLAM QALA at the border of the two countries before moving back to Afghanistan. His name has been changed to protect his identity.

Iran – who says he hosts more than four million homeless Afghans who have escaped conflict in their home country – has been increasing deportations for months. In March, those without documents received a deadline for July to leave voluntarily, but after a brief war with Israel in June, authorities forcibly returned hundreds of thousands of Afghans, claiming to be reported to fears about national security.

The daily returns reached their peak of about 50,000 people in early July, according to the United Nations organization – often after heavy trips.

Ali Ahmad says Iranian employees confiscated his money and his phone and left it without “a single penny to travel back.” He lived in Iran for two and a half years.

Iranian repression coincided with widespread accusations linking Afghans to Israel Mossad intelligence agency, including Iranian media reports citing police sources, claiming that some persons were arrested for espionage.

“We are afraid to go everywhere, we are constantly worried that we can be labeled as spies,” said one person who wished to remain anonymous, “BBC News Afmangan told BBC.

“You Afghans are spies,” “You work for Israel” or “you build drones in your homes,” according to this person are other common accusations.

Barnet Rubin, an Afghanistan expert, who was a senior councilor at the US State Department, says Tehran can “seek redemptive sacrifices” because of his shortcomings in the war against Israel.

“The Iranian government is very confused by its security failures,” which shows that Iran “was very penetrated by Israeli intelligence,” he says.

“So they had to find someone to blame.”

Critics also say that the allegations of espionage are aimed at buying legitimacy for the government’s plan for deporting undocumented Afghans.

The BBC tried to contact the Iranian government, but did not get an answer. The return of Afghan refugees “without tension and in terms of human rights … is a goal pursued at all levels,” the Islamic Republic -backed State reported on July 18.

Abdulla Reza, whose name has also changed, has a similar story with Ali Ahmad.

At the detention center, where he was held, about 15 Iranian officers physically harmed him and other deportors, Abdullah told the BBC in Islam Kala.

“The Iranian police tore my visa and my passport and beat me hard. He accused me of being a spy.”

Abdullah says he was in Iran only two months before he was detained, even though he had a visa.

“They beat us with plastic sticks and said,” You’re a spy, you’re ruining our country. “

He was detained for four days, “feeling like four years.” He describes constant abuse, physical violence and lack of food.

Online allegations of collaboration between Afghans and Israeli secret services began at the beginning of the war.

On June 13, on the day Israel attacked Iranian nuclear and military facilities, the government issued statements to the population, asking citizens to report suspicious activities as unusual movements of vans that can transport the weapons of Israeli operating.

Telegram channels with major consequences published warning messages using a similar formulation by the government. But they added that the population should be vigilant to “alien citizens” – an expression used most to describe the Afghans in Iran – driving vans in big cities.

The next day, a series of detainees of people who are said to be related to Israeli attacks, including some Afghans, were reported.

On June 16, news channels broadcast a video of Afghans who were detained, claiming that they were carrying drones with them. It became viral. But the video was old and depicted migrants detained because of their undocumented status.

On June 18, a group of telegram attributed to the Islamic Revolutionary Corps of Guard, reported that 18 Afghans had been arrested in Mashhad for the construction of drones for Israel, according to the independent observation group Afghanistan.

The next day, the provincial deputy chief of security was cited, saying that arrest did not have a “connection with the creation of drones” or cooperation with Israel. “They were only arrested for being illegal in Iran.”

But publications linking the arrests with espionage have spread widely to social media platforms. Heshtag, which says “Afghans is a national demand” has been shared more than 200,000 times per month, reaching more than 20,000 mentions on July 2.

The anti -Afghan sentiment for Iranian social media is not new, but the difference this time is “misinformation is not just from the users of social media, but by the associated with Iranian media,” according to an independent researcher by the Afghan witness.

More than 1.5 million Afghans have left Iran since January, according to the UN Refugee Agency. A spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and the Taliban repatriation told the BBC that over 918,000 Afghans had entered Afghanistan from Iran between June 22 and July 22.

Some have been in Iran for generations.

Millions of Afghans have fled to Iran and Pakistan since the 70s of the last century, with large waves during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and more recently in 2021, when the Taliban returned to power.

Experts warn that Afghanistan does not have the ability to assume the increasing number of citizens who have forcibly returned to a country as a rule of Taliban. The country is already fighting a large influx of returning from Pakistan, which also forces hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave.

Initially, the Afghans were greeted in Iran, says Dr. Hadi Abbas, who specializes in forced displacement at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. But anti -Afghan sentiment is increasing gradually, with state media representing Afghan refugees as an “economic burden” for society, she says.

False stories about Afghan migrants in Iran followed the example.

In the 1990s, a series of rapes and murders in Tehran was widely accepted, without evidence, to be the work of Afghanistan, which led to an increase in hatred crimes. It was later revealed that the killer was Iranian.

When approximately two million Afghans migrated to Iran in the wave after 2021, exaggerated posts on social media claim that more than 10 million Afghans live in the country. Iran was the only neighbor to allow refugees and migrants to go on a scale during this time.

The expulsion of Afghans from Iran, says Dr. Abbas, “may be one of the very rare topics that most Iranians” are in agreement with the government – although in July more than 1300 Iranian and Afghan activists have signed a letter calling for the termination of “non -human” treatment of Afghan Afghanestani treatment.

Today, anti -Afghan sentiments are widespread. “It has become very dangerous,” she says, “so people will just try to stay home.”

For huge numbers, this is no longer an option. The border continues to swell with people.

For Abdullah, deportation has destroyed his plans.

“I lost everything,” he says.

By Babrak Ehsas, Yasin Rasouli, Rowan ings and Suchera Maguire, with additional reporting from Soroush Pakzad