This article is from: srnnews.com
Iran’s Crisis Is Sending Afghans Home to Few Jobs and Taliban Rule
The movement back to Afghanistan is dominated by deportations, but a second dynamic is becoming more visible: Afghans arranging their own departures from Iran because they can no longer afford to stay
By Giorgia Valente / The Media Line
Afghans who once looked to Iran for work, relative stability and, for some, an escape from Taliban rule are increasingly confronting a stark reversal: returning to Afghanistan as war, soaring prices and disappearing livelihoods make remaining in Iran harder.
The movement remains dominated by deportations, but a second dynamic is becoming more visible—Afghans arranging their own departures from Iran because they can no longer afford to stay.
By August 29, 484,800 Afghans had returned from Iran to Afghanistan since the beginning of 2026, according to UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration. Of those, 404,400 were recorded as deportations. Across all neighboring countries, more than 1.18 million Afghans had returned to Afghanistan this year by that date.
The distinction between deportation and other forms of return is increasingly important. Official statistics classify “returns” broadly, encompassing deportations, assisted voluntary repatriation and other movements, meaning that those outside the deportation category should not automatically be understood as people who freely decided to go home.
At the Islam Qala crossing in western Afghanistan, a senior Taliban border official told Reuters that at least 20 to 40 families, including women and girls, were now returning on their own each day. Reuters interviews with returnees found widespread reports of months without work, unpaid wages and rapidly rising living costs. Iran’s consumer prices were running nearly 90% higher year on year, according to data from the country’s statistical center, cited by Reuters, while food inflation was approaching 130%.
Surveys by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) cited by the news agency found that only 29% of recently returned Afghans still had savings, after their average incomes fell by almost a third from pre-crisis levels.
For Ali Latifi, a journalist based in Kabul, the new movement cannot be reduced to economics alone.
“It’s a combination of things,” Latifi said to The Media Line. “One is safety concerns, because attacks are still very much on the cities, and people have even had their apartment buildings come under attack. Because so many factories and different kinds of operations are closed, they can’t work there anymore. The only place where they are safe and there is potential for a job is Afghanistan, because it’s easy to get to. I couldn’t tell you the exact number, but it’s a visible amount,” he added.
The latest movement builds on a much larger return crisis that predates the current deterioration inside Iran. The United Nations said in May that nearly 5.9 million Afghans had returned from Iran and Pakistan since September 2023, increasing Afghanistan’s population by an estimated 10% to 12% in little more than two years. The UN and humanitarian organizations have prepared for as many as 2.7 million additional returns from the two neighboring countries between April and December this year.
Iran has for decades been one of the principal destinations for Afghan workers and refugees. Even after the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in August 2021, employment in Iran offered many Afghan households an income that was difficult to generate at home.
That economic logic is now weakening.
Latifi said the change is already visible among workers waiting for daily employment in Herat, the Afghan city most directly connected to the Iranian border.
“In Herat now, a lot of the daily laborers are people who came from Iran across the border,” he said. “If you talk to the day laborers who usually wait at different intersections, they will say that probably in each group about half came very recently from Iran and are now looking for work,” he added.
Latifi stressed that this was an observation from workers rather than an official statistic. But he said the occupational profile of those returning helps explain why they face difficulty integrating into Afghanistan’s labor market.
“These were people who worked in factories, construction, furniture assembly—those kinds of semi-skilled jobs,” he said, adding, “Those are all things that have essentially been shut down for different reasons in Iran, and so that drives them to come to Afghanistan.”
The problem does not end at the border.
“There are so many people here who need jobs, and there are so few jobs,” Latifi said. “The kinds of semi-skilled work that Afghans coming from Iran usually did have a smaller market in Afghanistan, and because of the competition those jobs are so coveted. A lot of them end up as day laborers or taxi drivers, or basically doing anything else they can to make a living,” he added.
IOM has similarly warned that large-scale returns are placing additional pressure on already overstretched communities, housing, services and employment. Many returnees arrive with limited resources and struggle to obtain housing and sustainable livelihoods.
But describing those who cross without being formally deported as “voluntary” can obscure the pressures behind their decision, according to Stefanie Barratt, senior researcher at Samuel Hall, a think tank and social enterprise specializing in migration research.
“I would be careful with the word ‘voluntary.’ Someone organizing their own departure does not necessarily have a meaningful choice to stay. If you cannot pay rent, are not being paid for your work, and fear deportation, leaving may be the only option you can see. Our research with UN Women documents women losing homes, livelihoods and networks through abrupt returns. Economic pressure and legal insecurity reinforce each other; we need to look beyond whether someone was formally deported,” she noted.
That distinction is particularly relevant for families.
Latifi said Afghans are increasingly arriving together rather than leaving relatives behind in Iran.
“They’re coming as families because they feel they can’t leave their family behind in a place where there are still active attacks, the threat of deportation and no income source,” he said. “It’s a combination of all three at once.”
For people facing those immediate pressures, he argued, the nature of the authorities governing Afghanistan may become a secondary consideration.
“The concern is getting their family to safety,” Latifi said. “They’re still Afghans, so they still understand Afghan society and culture. I don’t think who’s in charge is really at the top of their mind when there are missiles landing on apartment blocks,” he added.
Yet returning to Afghanistan creates a particularly difficult trade-off for women and girls.
Five years after the Taliban returned to power, restrictions continue to exclude women and girls from much of public life, secondary and higher education, and many forms of employment. The United Nations said this month that the Taliban’s continuing policies affect every aspect of women’s lives and remain an obstacle to Afghanistan’s economic development.
Samuel Hall’s recent research for UN Women illustrates the economic consequences for women returning from neighboring countries.
“In our recent study for UN Women, we surveyed 582 returnee women, including 281 from Iran. Among those who had worked in Iran, 77% were no longer employed after return. Only around 17% of women across the sample were working. That is a substantial loss of economic independence. Women and girls may also have limited say in the decision to return, while bearing major consequences for their work and education,” Barratt told The Media Line.
The study found that women frequently return without the assets, financial resources or networks needed to rebuild livelihoods in an economy where opportunities for female participation are already heavily restricted.
There is also a less visible consequence: the loss of remittances.
For years, Afghan labor migration to Iran has not only provided employment for migrants but also supported households in Afghanistan. When a worker returns, the family can therefore lose an income stream at the same moment another unemployed person joins the household.
“There is a double pressure: a returning worker needs a livelihood, while their family loses the money that worker used to send home,” Barratt said.
Samuel Hall’s World Vision research examined households in Herat, Faryab and Kabul whose remittances from Iran stopped after the migrant worker returned.
“For our World Vision study, Compounding Returns, we studied households in Herat, Faryab and Kabul whose remittances from Iran had stopped following the sender’s return. Nearly half (47%) had found no alternative income source, and 97% reported debt. Families described cutting meals, delaying healthcare and borrowing for essentials,” she said.
The study found that lost remittances were feeding debt, food insecurity and negative coping mechanisms, with effects extending beyond individual returnees to entire households and local economies.
UNHCR’s broader post-return monitoring points in the same direction. Its survey of 1,658 recently returned households from Iran and Pakistan found that 88% were in debt. UNHCR later reported that an estimated 92% of surveyed returnee households earned less than $147 per month, and 90% said their debt had increased after their return.
Barratt cautioned, however, against seeing returnees exclusively as an additional burden.
“These pressures also affect existing residents, local businesses and services. But returnees bring skills and experience … something that does not get nearly stressed enough. They can contribute substantially, provided they have investment, access to markets and the ability to work,” she said.
That potential is visible in the kinds of workers Latifi described returning from Iran: people with experience in construction, manufacturing, furniture production and other trades. The problem is whether Afghanistan’s economy can absorb those skills quickly enough.
Nor do current movements necessarily mark a permanent reversal of decades of Afghan migration toward Iran.
UNHCR’s post-return monitoring found that most surveyed returnees planned to remain in Afghanistan. Barratt noted that 88% of returnees from Iran intended to stay in their current location. But 6% said they intended to leave Afghanistan again, and among that smaller group, 71% identified Iran as their intended destination.
“I would therefore be cautious about calling this a permanent reversal … or assuming Europe is the next destination,” she noted.
For Latifi, the immediate movement is ultimately defined less by preference than by shrinking alternatives.
“These people coming at this moment are really coming out of necessity,” Latifi said. “When you talk to them, they say: our children were killed, we were rounded up and told we had to leave, or the factory we worked in shut down and there was no work. On top of that, there were bombs falling. So the only thing they could do was come here, because it’s the easiest place to get to,” he said.
The result is a migration pattern that at first appears contradictory: Afghans returning to a country governed by the Taliban, including families with women and girls whose lives will be far more restricted there.
But the contradiction becomes less stark when the decision is viewed not as a straightforward choice between Iran and Afghanistan, but as the consequence of narrowing economic, legal, and security options on both sides of the border.
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