Iran Forcibly Deports 100,000 Afghans

Afghan deportees stand in a line after getting off from buses to across the border from Iran to Afghanistan, in Islam Qala, Herat, Afghanistan, on Wednesday, June 06, 2007. Men, women and children have been swept up in the frenzy and hauled to the Afghan-Iran border post in Islam Qala as Iran cracks down on illegal migrants. About 1,200 to 1,300 deportees, most of them men, file into Islam Qala almost daily. (AP Photo/Farzana Wahidy) (Farzana Wahidy - AP)

AFGHANISTAN-IRAN BORDER -- Dumped at this frontier outpost alongside hundreds of weary Afghan laborers, Khalil Jalil stepped out of Iran and back into Afghanistan only days after he said Iranian authorities beat him, threw him in the trunk of a car and locked him in a detention center.

The 23-year-old's violent ejection is part of a broad Iranian crackdown on illegal Afghan migrants that has pushed more than 100,000 deportees across the border the past two months, leaving hundreds of Afghan families stranded without shelter and straining the impoverished country's resources.

Like Jalil, many of the deportees come with stories of abuse: Men beaten so badly that their legs and collarbones were broken, and legal refugees whose government-issued cards were cut into pieces by police.

Iran denies the allegations of abuse and says it has forced laborers back home because the 1.5 million undocumented Afghan migrants are an enormous burden on its economy.

As a result, about 2,000 Afghans a day are being sent out of Iran, where many sought better jobs or a stable home outside war-torn Afghanistan. Most are men, but entire families are being kicked out as well.

At the Islam Qala border crossing, about 75 miles west of the Afghan city of Herat, 1,200 people flow back into Afghanistan a day. Some carry suitcases, but several wear their work uniforms and are penniless, not having had a chance to collect their salaries or savings.

One man had only crumbling bits of stale bread, a small bottle of water and another of soda tied up in a tattered black scarf.

Iran has sent undocumented Afghans home every year and announced these deportations in advance. But the numbers have been staggering, with more than 100,000 deported the past two months compared with 146,387 deported in all of 2006, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said.

Jalil entered Afghanistan wearing a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, the only possessions he could grab after two men in army uniforms and two in plainclothes woke him up with kicks and punches.

"They yelled at us, 'Get out, Afghan trash!'" Jalil said, describing how he was handcuffed to another laborer and thrown in the trunk of a green sedan.

He had lived in Iran for seven years, and his parents and siblings were still there. They had entered with passports and visas but stayed on after their documents expired.

Like many interviewed here, Jalil said he paid his own $11 bus fare to be deported. Others said they bribed authorities to be deported immediately rather than being locked up in filthy, overcrowded detention centers.