Migrant Afghan workers return home
World | AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE 10 Aug 2018
Migrant workers squeezed into battered taxis pull into the Four Seasons of Freedom hotel in western Afghanistan, part of a wave of Afghans forced to leave Iran after a currency implosion wiped out their earnings.
A record 442,344 Afghans have voluntarily returned or been deported from Iran this year as looming US sanctions - which began to be reimposed this week - fueled a run on the rial and spurred inflation.
Iran's currency has lost around half of its value against the dollar since US President Donald Trump abandoned a landmark 2015 nuclear deal in May, triggering a reimposition of tough penalties on the Islamic republic.
That has devastated not only the savings of Iranian households, but also the remittances of undocumented Afghans.
Desperate and jobless Afghans have crossed the porous border with Iran for years in search of work to support their struggling families back home.
Many of those families are farmers now suffering through Afghanistan's worst drought in living memory, compounding the misery caused by 17 years of conflict and underscoring their reliance on the remittances.
Abdul Mussawir, who went to Iran three years ago, used to earn the equivalent of 18,000 afghanis per month (HK$1,945) working in an auto factory in the central city of Isfahan.
Mussawir, 22, sent money to his parents and nine younger siblings in Parwan province, supplementing the meager income of his taxi driver father.
But as the run on the rial gathered pace, his monthly earnings shrank to the equivalent of 6,000 afghanis.
The 442,344 Afghans who returned from Iran in the first seven months of 2018 was more than double the number for the same period of 2017, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Today's Standard
