Afghans in Iran (Persian: افغانها در ایران) are citizens of Afghanistan who are temporarily residing in Iran as refugees or asylum seekers. They form the largest percent of the Afghan diaspora. The first wave of Afghans crossed into Iran after the start of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979.

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According to Afghanistan's Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are approximately 3 million Afghan citizens in Iran as of January 2023,^[2][3][4] most of whom were born and raised in Iran during the last four decades.^[5][6] They are under the care and protection of the UNHCR,^[7][3] and are provided time-limited legal status by Iran's Bureau of Aliens and Foreign Immigrant Affairs,^[2] without a path to obtain permanent residency.^[8] There are also about 600,000 Afghan tourists, travelers, merchants, exchanged students, regular or irregular migrant workers, and others.^[9][7][3] According to Hassan Kazemi Qomi, half of Iran's foreign investors are Afghans.^[10]

There have been widespread reports of Iranian mistreatment of Afghan migrants and their human rights,^[11] and the community is very marginalized.^[12] In 2006, about 146,387 undocumented Afghans were deported.^[13] Many more continue to experience such events.^[14][15] In 2010, six Afghan prisoners were executed by hanging in the streets of Iran, which sparked angry demonstrations in Afghanistan.^[16]

As neighboring countries with cultural ties,^[17] there has been a long history of population movements between Iran and Afghanistan.^[18] Southern Afghanistan was contested between the Persian Safavid dynasty and the Moghuls of India until 1709 when Mir Wais Hotak, founder of the Hotaki dynasty, declared it independent.^[19] During the reign of Nader Shah, the brother of Ahmad Shah Durrani was made Governor of Mazandaran Province. A few years after Nader Shah's death, Durrani and his Afghan army made Nader's grandson Shahrokh Afshar, ruler of the small remaining Afshar territory comprising the Khorasan and Kohistan provinces of Iran, their vassal for some years.^[20] The region remained a vassal territory of the Afghan Empire until Durrani's death. During the early 19th century, the Persian army invaded Herat several times but with British assistance the Afghans quickly expelled them.^[21][22] Communities made up of 2,000 and 5,000 households of ethnic Hazaras were formed in Torbat-e Jam and Bakharz in Iran. The 1857 Treaty of Paris ended hostilities of the Anglo-Persian War. The modern day Afghan–Iranian border gradually began to take shape in the second half of the 19th century.

Afghan migrant workers, pilgrims and merchants, who settled in Iran over the years, had by the early 20th century, become large enough to be officially classified as their own ethnic group, referred to variously as Khavari or Barbari.^[23] Young Hazara men have embraced migrant work in Iran and other Persian Gulf states to save money for marriage and become independent; such work has even come to be seen as a "rite of passage".^[24] Such migration intensified in the early 1970s due to famine, and by 1978, there were an estimated several hundred thousand Afghan migrant workers in Iran.^[25]

The Soviet–Afghan War, which erupted in 1979, was the beginning of a series of major waves of refugee flight from Afghanistan.^[26] Those who came to Iran often augmented the ranks of migrant workers already there. The new Islamic Republic took place around the same time as the influx of masses of Afghan migrants to other countries, fleeing the plagues of problems in their own country. Iran started recognising those Afghans listed as migrants workers or refugees as legals. They issued them "blue cards" to denote their status, entitling them to free primary and secondary education, as well as subsidised healthcare and food. However, the government maintained some restrictions on their employment, namely prohibiting them from owning their own businesses or working as street vendors.^[18]

Most of the early academic attention on these new immigrants was focused on Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Studies on Afghans in Iran came later due to the political situation during the Iran–Iraq War.^[23] By 1992, a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there were around 2.8 million Afghans in Iran. Just 10% were housed in refugee camps; most settled in or near urban areas.^[25] For their efforts in housing and educating these refugees and illegals, the Iranian government received little financial aid from the international community.^[27] With the fall of the Najibullah government of Afghanistan in 1992, Iran began efforts to encourage refugees to repatriate. During these years, there were many reports of cases of Afghans being harassed by Iranian law enforcement officers. Legal residents had their identity cards confiscated and exchanged with temporary residency permits of one-month validity, at the expiry of which they were expected to have left Iran and have repatriated.^[28]

Afghan refugees have come to Iran since the 1980s, including children and adolescents.^[27] Many were born in Iran over the last 30 years but were unable to gain citizenship due to Iranian immigration laws. The refugees include Hazaras, Tajiks, Qizilbash, Pashtuns, and other ethnic groups of Afghanistan.^[33] One UNHCR paper claims that nearly half the documented refugees are Hazara, a primarily Shi'a group.^[34]

In Afghanistan, some people feel that using birth control violates the tenets of their religion; however, in Iran, attitudes are far different, due to the country's extensive promotion of family planning. Afghans in Iran have moved closer to mainstream Iranian values in this regard; the Iranian influence has even filtered back into Afghanistan.^[35] One study in Khorasan has found that while overall fertility rates for Afghan migrant women are somewhat higher than those for Iranian women there—3.9 vs. 3.6—the similarity hides significant age-related differences in fertility, with older Afghan migrant women having a far higher number of children than older Iranian urban women, while younger Afghan migrant women's number of children appears to be approaching the far-lower Iranian urban norm.^[36] Contraceptive usage among the same study group was 55%, higher than for local Iranian women.^[37]

More broadly, the same conservative men who resisted aggressive attempts by communist governments in Afghanistan to expand women's education and their role in the economy are now faced with the very changes from which they had hoped to shield their families. This shift in family and gender roles was induced by the experience of living as refugees in largely Muslim society.^[38]

Some Afghan men married Iranian women during their residence in Iran; however, under Iranian nationality law, the children of such marriages are not recognized as Iranian citizens, and it is also more difficult for the men to gain Iranian citizenship than for Afghan women married to Iranian men.^[39] As of 2019 this law has changed and Iranian women in mixed marriages can transfer their Iranian nationality to their children, regardless of the nationality of the child's father.^[40]

Although Iranian authorities have made efforts to educate Afghan children, Human Rights Watch reports that many undocumented Afghan children face bureaucratic obstacles that prevent their children from attending school, in violation of international law. Iranian law limits Afghans who have permission as refugees to work to a limited number of dangerous and poorly paid manual labor jobs, regardless of their education and skills.^[8]

According to Hassan Kazemi Qomi, half of Iran's foreign investors are Afghans.^[10] With a population of 2 million, they have about 10% of the labor market in Iran. Their presence has led to protests by Iranian workers. The Iranian government has also imposed a number of restrictions, including the ban on the use of foreign workers in governmental and non-governmental organizations, and called on all government agencies, non-state actors, companies and contractors to provide their needed labor to Iranian workforce, with numerous penalties, including imprisonment and a fine for the offending employers. However, many employers prefer to hire Afghans due their low wage expectations, lack of insurance requirements, and their high productivity.

According to Tehran Times, 120,000 Afghans in Iran have health insurance.^[9] Over 40,000 of them are enrolled in Iranian schools and universities.^[9] Their education in Iran is free.^[58][59][60]

Every year large number of Afghans return to Afghanistan from neighboring Iran and Pakistan. Some are deported for overstaying or getting in trouble with the law.^[61]

Since the 1980s, a number of Iranian movies set in Iran have featured Afghan immigrant characters. One early example is Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 1988 movie The Cyclist, in which the character of the title, a former cycling champion of Afghanistan, gives a demonstration in his town's square whereby he rides his bicycle without stopping for seven days and seven nights, with the aim of raising money for life-saving surgery for his wife. In the end, even after seven days, he continues to pedal endlessly, too fatigued to hear his son's pleas to get off his bicycle.^[64] One scholar analyses the film as an allegory which parallels the exploitation that Afghan refugees suffer from in Iran and from which they are unable to escape.^[26]

Other notable films with Afghan characters include Jafar Panahi's 1996 The White Balloon, Abbas Kiarostami's 1997 A Taste of Cherry, Majid Majidi's 2000 Baran, and Bahram Bayzai's 2001 Sagkoshi.^[26]

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• Jalaleddin Farsi, former candidate for the presidency of Iran^[65]
• Setayesh Qorayshi
• Fereshteh Hosseini

• Afghanistan–Iran relations