{"id":10887,"date":"2018-08-09T11:37:29","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T11:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10887"},"modified":"2018-08-09T11:37:29","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T11:37:29","slug":"afghans-return-home-in-record-numbers-as-iran-currency-plunges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10887","title":{"rendered":"Afghans return home in record numbers as Iran currency plunges"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nHERAT, Afghanistan: 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 \u2014 which began to be reimposed this week \u2014 fueled a run on the rial and spurred inflation.
Iran\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 (about $260) 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 meagre income of his taxi driver father.
But as the run on the rial gathered pace, his monthly earnings shrivelled to the equivalent of 6,000 afghanis.
\u201cI was sending almost all the money I was earning to support my family… (but) it wasn\u2019t enough,\u201d said Mussawir, wearing a shirt emblazoned with \u201cKeep Karma + Carry On.\u201d
After taking a taxi from the border to the Four Seasons of Freedom hotel in Herat city, a distance of roughly 140 kilometers (90 miles), Mussawir hoped to find better paid work in his conflict-torn country.
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t make sense to come back here but I have to,\u201d he said, a look of resignation etched on his face.<\/p>\n

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 (IOM).
\u201cThe number of Afghan returnees from Iran in 2018 has been unprecedented,\u201d IOM spokeswoman Eva Schwoerer told AFP in Herat.
The figure included 191,056 \u201cspontaneous,\u201d or voluntary, returns. The remaining 251,288 were deported as Iran toughens its border controls.
Among those kicked out was 17-year-old Aleem Mohmini, who spent three months working on a tomato farm near the southern city of Shiraz before Iranian police caught him.
As he sat with other minors in the IOM\u2019s transit center for returnees in Herat, Mohmini pondered his future in a country where unemployment is rampant.
\u201cI don\u2019t know what I should do. There\u2019s no one in my family to earn money,\u201d said Mohmini, who was the breadwinner for his household in the northern province of Baghlan.
The IOM expects the flood of returnees to Afghanistan to continue as US sanctions targeting Iran\u2019s access to US banknotes, key industries and oil sales exacerbate the country\u2019s economic woes.
The influx is having \u201cdirect and immediate effects\u201d on the Afghan economy, the IOM said in its latest report.
It is pushing down wages for casual laborers in cities and fueling the displacement of drought-stricken Afghan farmers, many of whom have long relied on income from relatives working in Iran.
More than 70,000 people have been forced to move to cities due to the lack of water and food, according to the United Nations, with many of them living in makeshift tents and competing with returnees for limited jobs.
Iran\u2019s currency freefall is also hurting Afghan businesses in Herat that rely heavily on returning Afghans for sales of mobile phones, backpacks and shoes.
\u201cBusiness was much better in the past… (people) were rich, they could buy everything,\u201d said Zia Fahmi, whose sales have plunged more than 80 percent in recent months.
As newly arrived returnees loitered outside his store, Fahmi said he may be forced to close the shop and join the migrant trail to look for work in \u201cother countries.\u201d
Abdullah Wasi Zahariyan, who spent a year working on a cucumber farm in Isfahan, also told AFP he plans to go to \u201canother country\u201d \u2014 most likely Turkey, and then Germany \u2014 if he cannot find a job in Afghanistan.
Zahariyan, 22, decided to return home after his earnings plunged 60 percent due to the devaluation of the rial.
\u201cIf there is no job in Afghanistan, there is no future,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HERAT, Afghanistan: 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 \u2014…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":10888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}