ISLAM QALA: Hajjar Shademani’s family waited for hours in the heat and dust after crossing the border into Afghanistan, their neat pile of suitcases all that remained of a lifetime in Iran after being deported to their homeland.
The 19-year-old and her three siblings are among tens of thousands of Afghans who have crossed the Islam Qala border point in recent days, the majority forced to leave, according to the United Nations and Taliban authorities.
Despite being born in Iran after her parents fled war 40 years ago, Shademani said the country “never accepted us.” When police came to her family’s home in Shiraz city and ordered them to leave, they had no choice.
But Afghanistan is also alien to her.
“We don’t have anything here,” she told AFP in English.
Between Iranian universities that would not accept her and the Taliban government, which has banned education for women, Shademani’s studies are indefinitely on hold.
“I really love studying... I wanted to continue but in Afghanistan, I think I cannot.”
At Herat province’s Islam Qala crossing, the checkpoint is usually busy handling the cycle of smuggling to deportation as young men seek work in Iran.
But since Tehran ordered Afghans without the right to remain to leave by July 6, the number of returnees — especially families — has surged. More than 230,000 departed in June alone, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.
Since January, more than 690,000 Afghans have left Iran, “70 percent of whom were forcibly sent back,” IOM spokesperson Avand Azeez Agha told AFP.
Of the more than a dozen returnees AFP spoke to on Saturday, none said they had fled the recent Iran-Israel conflict, though it may have ramped up pressure. Arrests, however, had helped spur their departures.


Yadullah Alizada had only the clothes on his back and a cracked phone to call his family when he stepped off one of the many buses unloading people at the IOM-run reception center.
The 37-year-old said he was arrested while working as a day laborer and held at a detention camp before being deported to Afghanistan.
Forced to leave without his family or belongings, he slept on a bit of cardboard at the border, determined to stay until his family could join him.
“My three kids are back there, they’re all sick right now, and they don’t know how to get here.”
He hopes to find work in his home province of Daikundi, but in a country wracked by entrenched poverty and unemployment, he faces an uphill climb.
The UN mission for Afghanistan, UNAMA, has warned that the influx of deportees — many arriving with “no assets, limited access to services, and no job prospects” — risks further destabilising the crisis-wracked country.
Long lines snaked into tents encircling the reception center where returnees accessed UN, NGO and government services.
Gusty wind whipped women’s Iranian-style hijabs and young men’s trendy outfits, clothing that stood out against the shalwar kameez that has become ubiquitous in Afghanistan since the Taliban swept to power in 2021, imposing their strict interpretation of Islamic law.
Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi inspected the site on Saturday, striding through the crowd surrounded by a heavily armed entourage and pledging to ensure “that no Afghan citizen is denied their rights in Iran” and that seized or abandoned assets would be returned.
Taliban authorities have consistently called for “dignified” treatment of the migrants and refugees hosted in Iran and Pakistan, the latter having also ousted hundreds of thousands of Afghans since the latest decades-long war ended.


Over one million Afghans have already returned to Afghanistan this year from both neighboring countries. The numbers are only expected to rise, even as foreign aid is slashed and the Taliban government struggles for cash and international recognition.
The IOM says it can only serve a fraction of the returnees, with four million Afghans potentially impacted by Iran’s deadline.
Some of the most vulnerable pass through the agency’s transit center in Herat city, where they can get a hot meal, a night’s rest and assistance on their way.
But at the clean and shaded compound, Bahara Rashidi was still worried about what would become of her and her eight sisters back in Afghanistan. They had smuggled themselves into Iran to make a living after their father died.
“There is no man in our family who can work here, and we don’t have a home or money,” the 19-year-old told AFP.
“We have nothing.”

MCLEOD GANJ: Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, gave on Monday the strongest indication yet that the 600-year-old institution would continue after his death, at prayer celebrations for his 90th birthday.
The Dalai Lama joined thousands of Buddhist followers on Monday in the prayer celebrations, a landmark event resonating far beyond the Indian Himalayan town where he has lived for decades.
“As far as the institution of the Dalai Lama, there will be some kind of a framework within which we can talk about its continuation,” he said, speaking in Tibetan.
The leader, who turns 90 on July 6, is according to Tibetans the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.
He and thousands of other Tibetans have lived in exile in India since Chinese troops crushed an uprising in the Tibetan capital Lhasa in 1959.
Draped in traditional maroon and yellow robes, the Dalai Lama sat and listened to speeches and chants of monks, nuns, pilgrims, as well as well-wishers from across the world on Monday.
“Though I am 90 years old, physically I am very healthy,” he said, before tasting a slice of Tibetan-style birthday cake, an elaborately decorated tower made from roasted barley and butter cut in front of him.
“In the time I have left, I will continue to dedicate myself to the well-being of others as much as possible,” he said.


The Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday is more than a personal milestone.
The charismatic Nobel Peace Prize-winning Buddhist Tenzin Gyatso is also expected to reveal if there will be another Dalai Lama after him.
The Dalai Lama has said the institution will continue only if there is popular demand — and is widely expected to reveal that decision on Wednesday.
The occasion carries profound weight not only for Tibetans, but also for global supporters who see the Dalai Lama as a symbol of non-violence, compassion, and the enduring struggle for Tibetan cultural identity under Chinese rule.
“We offer our fervent devotions that Tenzin Gyatso, protector of the Land of Snows, lives for one hundred eons,” a chorus of red-robed monks sang.
“May all your noble aspirations be fulfilled,” they added, in front of a crowd that included religious leaders of many faiths.
His advancing age has also sparked concern over the future of Tibetan leadership and the delicate question of his succession.
While China condemns him as a rebel and separatist, the internationally recognized Dalai Lama describes himself as a “simple Buddhist monk.”
Many exiled Tibetans fear China will name a successor to bolster control over a territory it poured troops into in 1950.
The Dalai Lama has been lauded by his followers for his tireless campaign for greater autonomy for Tibet, a vast high-altitude plateau in China about the size of South Africa.
The Dalai Lama handed over political authority in 2011 to an exiled government chosen democratically by 130,000 Tibetans globally.
At the same time, he warned that the future of his spiritual post faced an “obvious risk of vested political interests misusing the reincarnation system.”