Former Afghan soldiers fear deportation from Iran

Washington — Editor's note: this story was translated from the original VOA Dari article.

“We are in a very difficult situation in Iran,” said a former Afghan soldier, adding that “there is always the fear of being deported to Afghanistan.”

The 37-year-old former soldier, who requested not to be named for security reasons, told VOA that he fled Afghanistan soon after the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

Remembering his forced deportation and brief detention by the Taliban, he fears being deported again as Iran continues the forcible expulsion of Afghans.

The United Nations said on Oct. 12 that Iran deported nearly half a million Afghan nationals back to Afghanistan in 2026.

In 2025, about 1.9 million Afghans returned from Iran, including 1.26 million who were deported. Iran hosts the largest Afghan refugee community in the world. According to the U.N., there are 4.4 million Afghan nationals living in Iran. This includes 1.4 million undocumented Afghans.

“I live in hiding, with no documents. I go to work in the morning and come straight back home. I don’t go out at all anywhere,” the former soldier said, adding that he fears being arrested and deported.

He added that he would rather endure the difficult situation living in Iran than be forced to return to Afghanistan, where his life would be in danger.

His story is just one of the many involving former Afghan security personnel who live in fear of being deported to Afghanistan and arrested by the Taliban.

In its latest report released last week, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said that it documented at least four killings and 14 arbitrary arrests and detentions of former Afghan security personnel between July 1 and Sep. 30, 2026.

The report said that despite the Taliban’s announcement of a general amnesty, former Afghan officials who return to the country remain at risk.

Under Taliban rule, harassment, detention and killings are not limited to former security personnel, as activists are also at risk.

Khalid Qaderi, an Afghan writer and journalist, was arrested in 2022 and accused “of spreading anti-regime propaganda and committing espionage for foreign media outlets.”

Qaderi, who was in the Taliban’s prison for 10 months, told VOA that after he was transferred to the Taliban’s Intelligence prison, he got to know that his Facebook posts and private conversations were used as evidence against him.

“There I realized that all my Facebook posts that I had written against the Taliban, and a collection of my voice messages in which I spoke against the Taliban in very private settings, were used against me, calling it propaganda against the regime," said Qaderi.

He added that the Taliban’s officials in the detention center in the western city of Herat tortured him.

After his release, Qaderi left Afghanistan.

“We either had to be quiet, or we had to leave the country, and I obviously chose to leave the country, at least not to be silenced,” he said.

In its quarterly report, UNAMA documented at least 443 arbitrary arrests and detentions and 97 incidents of ill-treatment of Afghan women and men.