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Ali Ahmad, visibly emotional, revealed deep bruises on his back, stating he was subjected to physical abuse while in Iranian custody.
He recounted to the BBC earlier this month that Iranian officers allegedly struck him and accused him of espionage. “They used hoses, water pipes and wooden boards to beat me. They treated us like animals,” he claimed, speaking at Islam Qala on the Afghanistan-Iran border prior to his return to Afghanistan. His name has been changed to protect his identity.
Iran, which reports hosting over four million undocumented Afghans displaced by conflict, has been increasing deportations in recent months. A voluntary departure deadline was issued in March for those without documentation, but since a brief conflict with Israel in June, authorities have forcibly returned hundreds of thousands of Afghans, citing national security concerns.
The United Nations reported that daily returns peaked at approximately 50,000 individuals in early July, often following arduous journeys.
According to Ali Ahmad, Iranian officials confiscated his money and phone, leaving him without “a single penny to travel back” after living in Iran for two and a half years.
Iran’s crackdown coincides with widespread accusations linking Afghans to Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, including Iranian media reports citing police sources claiming arrests for espionage.
“We’re afraid to go anywhere, constantly worried that we might be labelled as spies,” an anonymous source told BBC News Afghan.
The individual added that frequent accusations include: “You Afghans are spies”, “You work for Israel” or “You build drones in your homes.”
Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert and former senior adviser to the US Department of State, suggests Tehran may be “looking for scapegoats” for its shortcomings in the conflict with Israel.
He stated that the Iranian government is “very embarrassed by their security failures,” indicating Iran “was very thoroughly penetrated by Israeli intelligence.”
“So they had to find someone to blame,” Rubin concluded.
Critics also assert that the espionage accusations are intended to legitimize the government’s plan to deport undocumented Afghans.
The BBC attempted to contact the Iranian government for comment but received no response. The state-backed Islamic Republic News Agency stated on July 18 that the return of Afghan refugees “without tension and with respect for human rights… is a goal pursued at all levels.”
Abdullah Rezaee, whose name has also been changed, shared a similar account to Ali Ahmad.
Abdullah told the BBC at Islam Qala that approximately 15 Iranian officers physically harmed him and other deportees at the detention center where he was held.
“Iranian police tore up my visa and passport and beat me severely. They accused me of being a spy,” Abdullah stated.
Abdullah says he had only been in Iran for two months before being detained, despite possessing a valid visa.
“They beat us with plastic batons and said: ‘You’re a spy, you’re ruining our country’.”
He described his four days in detention as “feeling like four years,” citing constant mistreatment, physical abuse, and lack of food.
Online allegations of collaboration between Afghans and Israeli secret services emerged early in the recent conflict.
On June 13, the day Israel reportedly attacked Iranian nuclear and military facilities, the government issued statements urging citizens to report suspicious activities, such as unusual movements of vans potentially transporting Israeli operatives’ weapons.
Telegram channels with significant followings subsequently posted warning messages mirroring the government’s wording, but added that the population should be vigilant of “alien citizens” – a term often used to describe Afghans in Iran – driving vans in major cities.
The following day, reports surfaced of detentions of individuals allegedly linked to the Israeli attacks, including some Afghans.
On June 16, news channels broadcast a video of Afghans being detained, claiming they were carrying drones. The video went viral but was later found to be old footage of migrants detained for lacking documentation.
On June 18, a Telegram group attributed to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed that 18 Afghans had been arrested in Mashhad for building drones for Israel, according to the independent monitoring group Afghan Witness.
The following day, the provincial deputy security chief was quoted as saying the arrest had “no connection to drone-making” or cooperation with Israel, stating, “They were arrested solely for being in Iran illegally.”
However, posts linking the arrests to espionage had already spread widely on social media platforms. A hashtag stating “expulsion of Afghans is a national demand” was shared over 200,000 times on X within a month, peaking at over 20,000 mentions on July 2.
While anti-Afghan sentiment on Iranian social media is not new, the current situation is marked by “misinformation is not just coming from social media users but from Iranian-affiliated media,” according to an independent researcher at Afghan Witness.
The UN Refugee Agency reports that over 1.5 million Afghans have left Iran since January. A spokesperson from the Taliban’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation told the BBC that over 918,000 Afghans entered Afghanistan from Iran between June 22 and July 22.
Some had resided in Iran for generations.
Millions of Afghans have sought refuge in Iran and Pakistan since the 1970s, with significant waves occurring during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and more recently in 2021, when the Taliban regained power.
Experts caution that Afghanistan lacks the capacity to absorb the increasing number of nationals forcibly returned to a country under Taliban rule. The country is already contending with a large influx of returnees from Pakistan, which is also compelling hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave.
Dr. Khadija Abbasi, a specialist in forced displacement at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, notes that Afghans were initially welcomed in Iran. However, anti-Afghan sentiment gradually increased, with state media portraying Afghan refugees as an “economic burden” to society.
False narratives regarding Afghan migrants in Iran subsequently emerged.
In the 1990s, a series of rapes and murders in Tehran were widely, but without evidence, attributed to an Afghan, leading to a rise in hate crimes. The perpetrator was later revealed to be Iranian.
Following the estimated two million Afghans who migrated to Iran in the post-2021 wave, exaggerated posts on social media claimed that over 10 million Afghans were residing in the country. At the time, Iran was the only neighboring country to allow refugees and migrants to enter on a large scale.
Dr. Abbasi suggests that the expulsion of Afghans from Iran “might be one of the very rare topics that most Iranians” agree with the government on, although in July, over 1,300 Iranian and Afghan activists signed an open letter calling for an end to “inhumane” treatment of Afghan citizens in Iran.
Today, anti-Afghan sentiment is widespread. “It has become very dangerous,” she says, “so people will just try to stay at home.”
For many, that is no longer an option, and the border continues to swell with people.
For Abdullah, the deportation has destroyed his plans.
“I lost everything,” he says.
By Babrak Ehsas, Yasin Rasouli, Rowan Ings, and Sucheera Maguire, with additional reporting by Soroush Pakzad
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