Impoverished by war in Iran, Afghan migrants return to Taliban rule

AI Summary

Due to severe economic collapse in Iran, triggered by war and sanctions, many Afghan migrants are returning home to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, facing dire poverty and inflation. The US naval blockade affecting Iranian crude exports and food price surges exacerbate hardships for migrants and locals alike.

Mohammad Saeed had just turned 18 when he fled to Iran with his parents and younger brother and sister, escaping the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in 2021. Now Saeed and his family are among thousands who have returned home to escape the economic crisis in Iran triggered by the conflict with the US and Israel. The family came back nearly empty-handed, Saeed said. “The Iranian currency had fallen so sharply,” he said, that the family’s savings, held in Iranian rials, lost over two-thirds of their value. Afghan nationals carrying their belongings walk after crossing the border from Iran at the Islam Qala border crossing in Herat province, Afghanistan, on Sept 3, 2026. — Reuters For decades, Iran’s industrialised and much larger economy offered Afghans an escape from poverty and, in the 1990s and again since 2021, from the harsh rule of the Taliban. Now, Iran’s economy has collapsed so severely that many Afghans said they saw returning as their only option. They are coming back with their wives and daughters, despite the severe restrictions on women in Afghanistan, with curbs on their education, travel and employment. Reuters journalists spent one week in the border regions of Afghanistan’s Herat province and neighbouring Farah speaking to people returning from Iran. Free to discuss it without fear of Iranian government scrutiny, most of those returning described a shattered economy in Iran. At the dusty Islam Qala border crossing between Iran and Afghanistan, a near-constant flow of returning migrants were undergoing document checks and registration formalities. Afghan nationals eat meals inside a temporary shelter after crossing the border from Iran at the Islam Qala border crossing in Herat province, Afghanistan, on Sept 3, 2026. — Reuters Officials were sitting in makeshift shipping containers. Coming back to their homeland, the returnees were faced with barren desert mountains and a pothole-plastered highway, the road to Herat, the biggest city in western Afghanistan. Most returning Afghans said they had been out of work for months and crushed by spiralling inflation before they decided to return. Compounded by the impact of tightening sanctions and a US naval blockade that has recently left Iran without shipping any meaningful crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz, consumer prices have surged by nearly 90 per cent year on year, according to Iran’s Statistical Centre. Food inflation has been even higher, at almost 130pc, making bread, milk and other essentials increasingly unaffordable. An Afghan national pushes a cart carrying his wife after they crossed the border from Iran, at the Islam Qala border crossing in Herat province, Afghanistan, on Sept 3, 2026. — Reuters Iran’s mission in New York did not respond to a request for comment. In the past, some Afghan salesmen could make profits in Iran’s bazaars by selling goods at around double the price at which they’d been purchased, said Sayed Jawed Qazi Khani, a 40-year-old migrant. But inflation and vanishing savings among both Iranians and Afghan migrants led to a collapse in consumer demand. “What remained was day labour,” he said, often at the same wage as one year ago. Only 29pc of Afghans who recently returned from Iran said they had any savings left after their average income fell by nearly one-third compared to pre-crisis levels, according to surveys by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). More women return More than two million Afghans have left Iran over the past two years. Most were deported or pressured to leave by Iranian authorities before the latest wave of returnees, who left amid the war, according to data from the UN Refugee Agency. Forced deportation remains a leading reason why Afghans are returning, with unaccompanied men long appearing to be the primary focus of Iranian authorities. But compared to pre-crisis levels, the crowds of returning Afghans increasingly also include women and entire families, according to returnees and IOM data. For many Afghan mothers and their daughters who had held out in Iran after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Iran’s recent economic crisis has confronted them with an almost impossible choice: face poverty there, or return to a country where half the women leave home only once or twice a month, according to the UN. The Taliban’s rules restrict women from travelling without male guardians and have barred them from some professions. The Taliban insist they respect women’s rights in accordance with Islamic law. Mother of Abdul Jabbar, an Afghan national who along with his family recently returned from Iran where they lived for nearly four decades, sits in her house in Farah province, Afghanistan, on September 1, 2026. — Reuters Abdul Jabbar, 44, said he did not want to take his wife, two daughters, grandson and mother back to Afghanistan. Their family had lived in Iran for nearly four decades and Jabbar had found