Deported into Nothingness - How Iran Dispossesses Millions of Afghans While the World Watches

They arrive across a border of dust and heat, with nothing but a plastic bag, an old backpack, sometimes a child in their arms. Nearly 20,000 people each day. Afghans driven out of Iran like shadows no one wants to see anymore. The number is staggering: more than 1.4 million since January, over half a million just after the war with Israel in June. And at the end of this road there is nothing - no home, no hope, no work, no rights. Only Afghanistan. In the western no man's land, in Islam Qala, where the desert begins and the state ends, there are tents, containers, a few rickety buses. Mohammad Akhundzada, 61, leans on a cane, beside him his wife and four children, all born in Tehran. "I worked in Iran for 42 years, my knees are broken. And now this?" he asks. His voice is quiet, no longer angry, just empty.

Iran has a decades-old refugee problem - and a new answer: deportation. Although millions of Afghans form the backbone of Iran's low-wage labor, Tehran has announced it will deport all undocumented people. After the war with Israel, it set a deadline, then came the hunt: checkpoints, raids, arbitrary arrests. Often followed by abuse, threats, destruction of identity papers. Some were suspected of spying for Israel - an accusation without evidence, but with an effect: to turn the fear of the population against the defenseless. There are reports like that of Ebrahim Qaderi, whose phone was taken away and whose hand was slashed with a knife on the way to work - just because he is Afghan. His mother said four Iranian hospitals refused to treat him. Another, Ali, with legal residency, described how an officer tore up his ID - saying, "What are you going to do? You're going to a deportation camp."

The return to one's own country is a banishment from both worlds. Afghanistan, paralyzed since the Taliban takeover in 2021, has no place for the returnees. The authorities register fingerprints, distribute some cash, point to overcrowded camps. Some receive two tents in a park. Others sleep under trees. The healthcare system has collapsed, more than 400 clinics have had to close. Aid organizations now cover only one-fifth of the need. And for girls, school ends at the latest after sixth grade. For families like the Mosavis, this is an existential catastrophe. Daughter Nargis, 14, had to stop her education. Her brother Ali Akbar, 13, carried a dented soccer ball, a pair of headphones, the last fragments of a life that no longer exists. When he realized on the way to Herat that he had lost his phone - the only way he could still listen to Persian music - he began to cry. The family had to stay in a tent camp for 5,000 people, the father spoke of a journey "into the unknown," back to their home province of Helmand, not even knowing if there was a house there. Iran justifies itself with a lack of resources - and at the same time shifts the blame for its own security failures onto the displaced. But the truth is more complex: for decades, Iran profited from Afghan labor - without integration, without rights. Now, in a phase of geopolitical instability, they are being sacrificed. And the world? It looks away.

So does Europe. So does Germany. In June 2025, deportations to Afghanistan increased again, officially citing "return agreements with safe regions" - a euphemism for looking away. The AfD in particular has specialized in portraying Afghans as a security risk. In talk shows, in campaign speeches, in legislative proposals. Those who do not want to see flight, misery, structural exclusion, construct threats. People who were mistreated in Iran and dispossessed in Afghanistan must also survive the journey through political calculus. Afghanistan is not a destination. It is a place where the horizon closes. And in Islam Qala, people stand at the threshold - to nothing. They wait for buses, for stamps, for answers no one gives. We cannot save them all. But we can help. In this case, we currently support the Afghan Refugee Movement and the Afghan Women's Network Europe - two initiatives tirelessly working for protection, visibility, and concrete aid. Their work begins where the world has long looked away.

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