Afghanistan’s workers: More oppressed and defenseless than ever
May 1 is celebrated by governments and international organizations around the world as International Workers’ Day.In Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, however, the day passes with little effort made to raise awareness about workers, the unemployed, or their rights.
The root cause of this silence and inaction is underdevelopment. Even by the standards of the early industrial societies of the late 18th century, today’s Afghanistan has not developed either an industrial base or a working class. For millions of Afghan labourers, becoming a worker able to earn a minimum-wage living remains an unattainable dream. As a result, Afghan labour activists find that discussing issues like exploitation often remains a theoretical exercise rather than an actionable agenda.
On International Workers’ Day, the most pressing issue for Afghans is unemployment and hunger. The International Organization for Migration recently reported that at least 5,000 Afghans have died on migration routes out of the country since 2014. The vast majority left Afghanistan in search of work. Tens of thousands of Afghan labourers have been killed or injured in workshops across Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and other countries during this period. Many are subjected to torture, discrimination, and extreme exploitation. In some cases, they are treated as modern-day slaves as they are forced to work for months or even years without pay.
Recently, Zan Times published a report on the condition of Afghan workers in Iran, in which workers shared harrowing stories about the behaviour of Iranian employers and the government. These accounts documented deaths at the workplace with no insurance or financial or legal support, as well as life-destroying injuries, unpaid wages, and the collusion between their exploiters and those running Iran’s economic and political systems.
Similar reports of mistreatment of Afghan workers have also emerged from Pakistan and Turkey, but none of these reports are as harrowing as the grim reality of hunger within Afghanistan itself. According to recent data, more than two-thirds of the population cannot earn the minimum income needed to stave off hunger while more than 30 percent of Afghan children have been forced into hard labour due to poverty. The cities of Afghanistan are filled with unemployed labourers, willing to work for as little as 300 afghani or less than US$5 a day. Yet, such jobs are not readily available. The lucky ones get such opportunities a few days a week.
Nearly 60 percent of Afghanistan’s population remains dependent in some way on agriculture. But since agriculture remains unmechanized and most farmers cannot meet their most basic subsistence needs, many agricultural workers have no choice but to search for work in cities or regional markets outside the country. In fact, the majority of Afghan migrant workers in Iran and Pakistan come from rural areas.
At the very bottom of society are the families of adult men who have been killed, disappeared, or disabled. There are a numerically significant number of these families due to decades of war and instability. In 2023, the Taliban announced they had registered 180,000 families who were without a male breadwinner. The total number is likely much higher. Because the women in these families face official Taliban restrictions and cultural barriers, they cannot leave home to look for work like men, nor can they travel to cities, other regions, or neighboring countries. As a result, these families oscillate between unbearable hunger and begging or relying on child labour and humanitarian aid for survival.
These categorizations and identifications of the most deprived groups are important for understanding the specific conditions of workers, farmers, and other economically marginalized people. The general situation is such that there is little difference in poverty between families without a male breadwinner and those with unemployed men and imprisoned women. Since August 15, 2021, the line separating workers from different social groups, including the middle class, has grown increasingly blurred until now, when the majority of the country’s population consists of the poor and the hungry.
Taliban rule has further deepened this desperate situation. The group’s leaders, while seizing scarce economic resources for themselves and fighting over revenue, call on the public to embrace poverty and hunger. They even attempt to portray poverty as a spiritual virtue.
By closing schools and universities to women and dismantling educational curricula in favour of obedience-based madrasa schools, they are de-skilling society. Their discriminatory and restrictive policies suppress initiative and ambition, driving skilled human capital out of the country. As a result, under Taliban rule, the future of Afghans’ access to bread and work appears even bleaker than the present.
To the Taliban, and perhaps to those influenced by their ideology, freedom of work and education, as well as other civil liberties, may seem abstract and irrelevant to the realities of everyday life. In truth, these freedoms are not only relevant but are essential. They are the foundation upon which human potential and skills can flourish, so that the people of this land might obtain enough food and water to escape hunger and deprivation.
Therefore, on this International Workers’ Day, it is vital to reaffirm the need to fight for both bread and freedom and to prioritize the establishment of a government that does not view basic human needs like work and education through the dark lens of Taliban ideology.
Younus Negah is a researcher and writer from Afghanistan who is currently in exile in Turkey.
