Bombs in wartorn Iran or life under the Taliban: The dilemma facing Afghan women
When the first Israeli missiles hit Tehran on June 13, Parisa didn’t change her daily routine. “They told us universities weren’t targets, and not to worry,” the 21-year-old political science student at Shahid Beheshti University recalls. “But by the end of the day, we heard that the nuclear scientists who were killed were all professors at our university. The nuclear studies faculty was just 15 minutes from our dormitory.”
In the nights that followed, the sky over Tehran turned grey and smoky with rocket trails. While international students from countries like Pakistan and African nations were swiftly evacuated with help from their embassies, Afghan students were left behind to fend for themselves.
After a missile landed near campus on the third day of the attacks, the university gave the students emergency clearance to leave, including those without formal exit permits.
Finding a ride was no easier than surviving in a warzone. Parisa and 34 other female students from Afghanistan tried to secure a bus to Mashhad, hoping to then be able to reach the Afghan border. But transportation had become both scarce and dangerous. “Most buses only had one or two free seats,” she says. “The war was escalating and we were desperate.” “We only trusted Afghan drivers,” Parisa says. “We had heard of Iranian drivers harassing Afghan girls.” Eventually, she and four other girls secured a taxi ride that cost two million tomans each. Even with transportation, they were warned that they wouldn’t make it through checkpoints without being accompanied by a close male relative. They called in a male cousin of one of the girls to pose as their mahram, or legal male guardian.
It took them twelve hours to reach Mashhad. There, with patchy internet access, Parisa messaged her fiancé in Europe who notified her family in Afghanistan of her safety. She stayed a night at a relative’s house before making her way to the bus terminal alone. She needed a male mahram to accompany her to cross the border, but also travel inside Afghanistan. “One couple said, ‘We can’t take responsibility for a young girl.’” Drivers simply refused to help. “A young man told me he couldn’t take the responsibility of transporting a single Afghan girl.”
Eventually, a large Afghan family composed largely of women agreed to let her travel with them. By the morning of the fifth day, they reached the border where a different battle began.
“We stood in line for hours. The Iranian officers would laugh at us. They’d pass our passports around to different officers just to prolong our suffering. One even told us outright that they enjoyed making us wait,” Parisa recounts to Zan Times.
By the time Parisa crossed into Afghanistan, she barely made a domestic flight to Kabul. Where she once had plans to complete her education in Iran and then reunite with her fiancé in Europe, now she wonders whether she’ll have to begin the immigration process all over again, this time from Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the Afghan female students she left behind were moved from their university dormitories to an unknown location. Continued internet blackouts in Iran mean no one knows their current location.
Afghan students weren’t just collateral damage in the Israel-Iran war, they were invisible.
As Iran entered its second week of missile exchanges with Israel, Afghan students as well as long-time residents found themselves caught between options of braving the bombs falling in Tehran or taking on the burdens involved in returning to Afghanistan under Taliban rule. That journey is a quagmire for women travelling alone as they negotiate their way through a corridor of misogyny and racism.
Asifa, a 25-year-old student in southern Tehran, says the first days of war were a blur of confusion. “I woke up to dozens of messages from my family and friends. I hadn’t even realized what had happened. I read the news on Facebook,” she says.
Her university sent messages assuring students that those who wished to leave the country could do so, even those without formal exit documents. But as with others, Asifa discovered that her exit was fraught with cost and chaos. “The internet was down. The sky was red. You’d hear the missiles but wouldn’t know where they’d land.” She wanted to stay and finish her exams. But her mother’s pleas from Afghanistan were constant: “Come home. Come now.”
She and five other female students paid 600,000 tomans each to get to the border and then paid 400,000 tomans bribes to an Iranian border guard who stamped their passports. On the other side of the border, they faced yet another kind of violence: “The Taliban officers and bus drivers in Herat insulted us. One said, ‘You had your fun with Iranians, now we have to clean up after you.’”
Asifa says the terminal in Herat was overwhelmingly male, with armed Taliban fighters patrolling and drivers interrogating women: “Where is your mahram? Why are you travelling alone?”
Their protests meant nothing; a woman without a male chaperone is not allowed to travel in Afghanistan. A lone woman cannot move freely, cannot access housing or government aid, and often cannot return to her hometown without being stopped.
Parwana, a 20-year-old international relations student, left Tehran on the fourth day of attacks. “Everyone was scared,” she says. “But the girls from Africa and Pakistan were more visibly panicked. They had never seen war. Afghan girls said, ‘At least in Afghanistan we know who shoots and when.’ In Iran, it was just missiles from the sky, we thought we’d all die without even knowing why.”
She and her friends managed to cross the border. The university later informed them that final exams would be rescheduled for September, assuming the war would end by then. But Parwana isn’t sure she’ll ever go back.
Iran’s treatment of Afghan migrants has grown increasingly hostile in the chaos of war. Some were accused of espionage. Others were arrested, detained, or deported.
Reza, 44, a longtime Afghan resident of Mashhad, was waiting in line at a bakery when an Iranian man told him, “You’re all spies. You should be thrown out.” Reza says he couldn’t respond not because he didn’t want to, but because he feared the consequences. “Any complaint could lead to arrest or deportation.”
Meanwhile, life is suddenly more expensive. Taxis and bus fares doubled or tripled overnight. Sami, a 27-year-old student, says that getting from Tehran to Mashhad used to cost 2.2 million tomans. “Now, it’s 4.8 million. And the longer you wait, the more expensive it gets.”
On June 23, a brief ceasefire was announced. The next day, Israel issued new evacuation orders in Tehran and threatened further attacks.
For Afghan women still trapped in Iran, time is running out. Sara, a journalism student, has stayed behind, unwilling to abandon her studies and work. But she knows her options are quickly narrowing. “If this war doesn’t end, I’ll have to go to Pakistan,” she says. “Afghanistan isn’t an option. Not for a woman like me.”
Sara and other Afghan women, especially those travelling alone, know that crossing into their home country is not an arrival. It’s a second exile.
Once in Afghanistan, they have to live under a a regime that not only refuses them autonomy, but legally bans them from travelling, accessing shelter, or working without a male guardian. Humanitarian support is limited and often inaccessible to women who don’t have a close male relative to sign paperwork or accompany them.
The border has become a trap. One side holds war and racism. The other holds bans and silence. And in the middle are women like Parisa, Asifa, and Parwana, fleeing bombs falling from the sky, only to find the ground has disappeared beneath their feet.
Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees. Khadija Haidary is Zan Times journalist.
