Sattar Amiri climbs with his wife and baby into a vehicle that accelerates into the Afghan desert. Like many other desperate migrants, this man has only one goal: “Get to Iran.”
“I don't have a choice. There is no future in Afghanistan,” says this 25-year-old man.
In Zaranj, a border town in southwestern Afghanistan, between 5,000 and 6,000 people expect to leave the country every day, four times the figure recorded before the Taliban returned to power in August, according to people helping them cross.
At night, the most daredevil try to climb the imposing wall that separates them from Iran, risking being hit by a shot by border guards.
During the day, thousands of men, women and children crowd into off-road vehicles for a long journey that skirts this wall and ends in Iran, passing through Pakistan.
Most are willing to take all the risks necessary to escape the collapse of the Afghan economy, caused by the freezing of billions of funds abroad and the total paralysis of international aid, which the country had sustained for 20 years.
Sattar lost his job as a mechanic for the army six months ago. Since then, it has been impossible for him to find work in a country where unemployment is soaring.
Therefore, he sold his house in Mazar-i-Sharif (north) to finance his family flight to Iran, where he hopes to work “in whatever”.
Like him, some 990,000 Afghans left their home region between August and December 2021 in the direction of Iran and Pakistan, according to a recent report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
- Industry of poverty -
This exodus transformed Zaranj, a traditional border crossing point, into an industry of poverty.
In the decrepit hotels in the center of the town where many people sleep on simple carpets, desperation in the face of lurking poverty is mixed with many people's fear of the Taliban.
Mohummad, a former policeman, tries to reach Iran after being beaten twice by Islamists. They wanted his service weapon, and he handed it over.
“But if they come a third time they will kill me”, fears this 25-year-old man, a native of the province of Daikundi (center), who does not want to give his surname.
According to the UN, the Taliban have already killed a hundred members of the former security forces since last August.
Interns, who facilitate the crossing of people, rub their hands at the rise of their customers. Behind the wheel of his SUV, Hamidullah doubled his prices to transport Afghans across the desert.
“It now costs six million tomans (about $242 in this Iranian currency), compared to the three million it cost before the Taliban seized power,” says this 22-year-old man who works with the approval of fundamentalists.
Every day, drivers like him gather in a parking lot in Zaranj, where the white Taliban flag flies and is guarded by armed fighters.
Men are crammed into the rear of vehicles, women and children ride tight in the driver's cab. At a rate of about 1,000 Afghanis, about $12, per vehicle, the Taliban allows vehicles to pass through the checkpoint at the exit from the city.
In mid-February, AFP saw some 300 vehicles pass through this point in a single day, each carrying about 20 people, which means that some 6,000 migrants pass through this point daily.
But these figures are questioned by the Taliban.
“To claim that 6,000 Afghans have left the country through a single border in a single day is propaganda,” said Mohammad Arsala Jarutai, Deputy Minister for Refugees.
“Not so many Afghans are leaving” and “no one can give an exact figure,” he replied to AFP during a press conference in Kabul.
- Dozens of dead -
On the chaotic tracks of the desert, off-road vehicles make these eight-hour journeys at high speed.
Once the border with Pakistan is reached, migrants are organized by other people, who will make them walk until they reach Iran.
For Maihan Rezai, this road is not an option.
This 20-year-old student is an easy prey for the fighters of Yundallah, a radical Sunni group that has abducted many people in remote areas of Pakistan.
“They kidnap us because we're Shiites and they torture us,” he explains. “Before, they beheaded us, but now they're holding us back and asking for ransom.”
Therefore, he and his friends try to climb the border wall with Iran, which extends as far as the eye can see at the exit of Zaranj.
But climbing these five meters of concrete, flooded with barbed wires, is an arduous task that is carried out at night, often under the fire of Iranian border guards. Often, the soldier responsible for a control tower can be bribed, but not those who are furthest away.
The interns “lie to us by saying that everything is coordinated” with the border guards but this is not the case, regrets Maihan, who has tried to break the wall several times without success.
For the past six months, at least 70 people have been killed when shot by Iranian soldiers, Taliban fighters in the area tell AFP.
Even if it succeeds, euphoria can be ephemeral. Because six months ago, Iran, which already received 3.4 million Afghans in 2020, most of them clandestine, immediately expels migrants if found.
According to the Taliban government, more than 2,000 migrants return to Afghanistan, expelled by Iran, every day.
But this does not discourage Sadat Qatal and Wahid Ahmad, crammed with their four children in a precarious room. For two months now, the family only eats bread and tea, because Wahid lost his job in Herat (west).
With what they achieved after selling their property, they paid rent and the family ended up in Zaranj, not quite sure which way to go.
Wahid's brother came to Iran by jumping the wall in January. “He told me that many died, that only three or four people, out of a total of 80, made it through,” says this man, without hiding his fear.
“We are very nervous,” Sadat sighs under his veil. “This is all because of hunger. If we still had a little hope, we wouldn't leave the country.”
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