Afghan Migrant Recalls Three Months of Slave Labor in Iran

Afghan children are routinely smuggled into Iran in a bid to support their families back at home. Following a dangerous, often traumatic journey into the country, they are forced to take on different jobs to survive and pay back the people-traffickers that brought them there. This is the story of Hamidollah, an Afghan migrant who came to Iran at the age of 16 only to flee in the face of ever-worsening hardship. 

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Hamidollah is now 18 years old. Two years ago he was smuggled into Iran, but after just three months of working in the country, he voluntarily turned himself in at Varamin Camp in order to be returned home. Throughout the course of our conversation, he insists it was a choice between admitting defeat and risking his life for no reason.

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This young man is a resident of Logar province, Afghanistan: a region suffering from high levels of poverty and unemployment. With his family struggling to make ends meet, he decided to leave for Iran at the age of 15. He and four other children dropped out of school and were put in touch with a smuggler in Kabul through a relative. This smuggler sent them to Nimrouz province, where 22 would-be migrants gathered one night and left the next day for Pakistan.

The people-trafficking route from Afghanistan into Iran usually passes over the Pakistan border, which is controlled by the Taliban. The smuggler pays the Taliban a sum of money known as  salahi: effectively a bribe to ensure his charges’ safe passage. From there the migrants are handed over to other smuggling groups, usually Pakistanis, and taken to the Iranian border, whereupon they are either left to fend for themselves or transported into the cities.

"When we arrived at the border with Pakistan,” Hamidollah remembers, “a Punjabi smuggler came to us. One of the two who had accompanied us from Nimrouz stayed with us and they took us to the Iranian border. There, we spent the night in a village. The house was in ruins. Some people slept in the car and others were taken inside.”

At four o'clock in the morning, passengers were taken by car toward the Iranian border. The sun was setting by the time the car stopped on a plain to give them their first food and water of the day. Due to what was described to them as “unfavorable conditions” they were forced to spend a day and a night there; their supplies of water and dry bread quickly began to run out.

Finally, the next night, the passengers were divided into two groups and set off again. At two o’clock in the morning, they arrived at the border. 

“The smuggler said we had to walk from there,” says Hamidollah. “He said we were in danger, and we should run. In the end we walked for 13 hours through plains and a forest. The smuggler left us there, in the middle of the road, and said someone else would come to pick us up. We waited for two hours before a group of Iranian smugglers – and one from Afghanistan – got to us. Apparently,  two nights before we arrived, another group of 15 was arrested and returned to Afghanistan."

They got into a fleet of waiting cars, with Hamidollah and four other children crammed into the boot or else huddled at the other passengers’ feet. “No-one dared to speak,” he says. “When we begged for water and food, they responded with swearing and insults.”

The whole trip lasted for 19 days. Eventually the passengers arrived in Tehran, and those who had paid in advance for the trip were released to seek their fortunes. But a number of others in the same convoy, including Hamidollah, had neither money nor acquaintances in Iran to keep them safe.

The young people were put to work to pay off their debt. Hamidollah was taken on by a Kurdish firm, first planting eggplant, then placed on a construction job. Fortunately he had a cousin in Tehran who also worked in construction, who on hearing about his case was able to pay off his debt for him. The pair then went into work together.

Despite this, after three months, Hamidollah had not received a single toman in payment and later realised his debt had simply been transferred. “My cousin was in contact with my father, and my father had told him to pay the money to the smugglers. I had worked for three months unpaid so as to repay that money. In the end my father decided that I should return to Afghanistan. At that time, the value of the toman had also fallen, and so working in Iran was no different to working in Afghanistan."

But Hamidollah had no passport, and no residence permit. “I was going to work afraid of being arrested. Every time I went to the market, I was worried. I had to go to Varamin Camp and hand myself over; after two days, I was taken to Sang-e Sefid [migration detention center], and was there for three days before I was finally returned to Afghanistan.”

Looking back on it now, Hamidollah says, he has no desire to enter Iran again. The hardships he faces in his own country, he has decided, are far better than the dangerous and inhumane alternative that would await him across the border.

This article was written by a citizen journalist in Tehran under a pseudonym.

Related coverage:

Iranian People-Smugglers Taking Afghans Hostage: A Refugee's Story

A Teenager’s Story of Being Trafficked into Iran

Afghan Migrants are Systematically Brutalized by Iran's Border Police

An Afghan’s Horrifying Memory of a Refugee Camp in Iran

Afghan Refugee’s Tale of Escaping from an Iranian Cauldron

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