The Iranian regime is stepping up expulsions of hundreds of thousands of Afghan immigrants in the wake of Israel’s defensive airstrikes to stop Tehran’s yearslong drive to destroy it as a refuge for Jews. These chauvinist, anti-working-class attacks on Afghans are sparking broad discussion in Iran, including solidarity from fellow workers, oppressed nationalities and others.
Independent unions of sugarcane workers, teachers, bus drivers, oil workers and retirees are among the organizations that have denounced the deportations and called on working people to reject the regime’s divisive anti-Afghan propaganda and actions.
The expulsions started well before the 12-day war, which ended June 24. The regime has long targeted Afghan workers as scapegoats for the deep capitalist economic crisis. Before the war 2,000 were expelled every day, now more than 500,000 have been deported in little more than a month. Since the beginning of the year, over 1 million Afghans have been driven from the country.
Over the last several weeks the regime has also arrested more than 1,000 people across Iran, accusing them of collaborating with “the Zionist regime.” These include large numbers of Afghans, as well as Arabs, Jews, Baluchis, members of the Baha’i faith, Kurds, union activists and others. Many could face the death penalty.
The wave of expulsions of Afghan migrants is “an extremely racist and anti-people policy,” says a July 3 joint statement from the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Workers Union and other workers’ organizations in western Iran.
Two organizations of oil contract workers — employees of Iran’s largest industry by far — denounced the regime’s “patriotic and xenophobic propaganda” and deportations “under the pretexts of security, military concerns, and ‘espionage for Israel.’” These acts, the oil workers said, are “an attack on workers and the entire society.”
The overwhelming majority of Afghans being expelled are working people who fled Afghanistan out of desperation to save their own lives and those of their families. They work in low-paying jobs in construction, garment and restaurants, side by side with Iranian workers, with especially large concentrations in Tehran and Isfahan.
During the Syrian civil war, opened by a mass popular rebellion there in 2011, Tehran sent 10,000 or more Afghans as cannon fodder to join the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in helping the Bashar al-Assad tyranny keep its grip on power.
More than 5 million Afghans lived in Iran before the current wave of expulsions, most having fled Afghanistan during the long, bloody U.S. war there and then after the Taliban seized power.
Afghans face severe discrimination in Iran. Most are unable to open bank accounts, own a car or obtain a driver’s license. They are barred from living in more than half of Iran’s provinces. Their Iranian-born children are not allowed to become citizens and are often denied the right to go to school.
The government fosters anti-Afghan sentiment to divide working people. Iranian media recently highlighted a sign outside a bakery in Kerman province saying that by law Afghans are barred from buying bread at the government-subsidized, lower-price bakeries many in Iran depend on.
The current expulsions are deepening this debate among working people. Some echo the government, while others defend Afghans’ right to remain and work in Iran. With views shifting in both directions.
Even the 1 million or so Afghans who have been granted residency documents are not immune from deportation — despite government claims they have nothing to worry about — with reports of police ripping up their passports and identity documents. In other cases, families are being torn apart, with some forced to go back to Afghanistan.
Many of the Afghans being expelled travel through Sistan-Baluchistan province and are penned temporarily in transit camps there. They’ve received solidarity from the Baluchi people, one of Iran’s oppressed nationalities, who live in that southeastern area. Baluchis bring them water, watermelons, cooked meals and tents in the face of atrocious conditions and the intense heat of Iran’s summer.
Generations of Baluchis have also been denied identity and residency documents. They too are often treated as “illegal” migrants by the reactionary Tehran regime and superexploited by bosses who take advantage of their lack of “papers.”
In a July 4 statement, Jafar Ebrahimi, a well-known former political prisoner and leader of the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers Unions, condemned the government’s racist anti-Afghan propaganda and encouraged teachers and others to stand “on the right side of history.”