This report has been published in partnership with the Guardian.
Safia thought she had finally found safety for herself and her children. After years of violence and hardship at the hands of her husband, a police officer now turned Taliban commander in the western province of Herat, Safia and her two children had fled to Iran in 2018 to start a new life.
There, with the help of other Afghan women refugees, she had started a small clothing business and had built a fragile but dignified life for herself and her family.
Two weeks ago, this all collapsed when Safia and her two teenage children were rounded up along with hundreds of thousands of other refugees, and forcibly expelled back over the border into Afghanistan.
Now, back in Herat, Safia lives in daily terror of her husband and his family.
“I was his second wife. My father forced me to marry him because he had both money and power. He used to beat me constantly,” she says. “Here in Herat it is not safe for me. My husband is now working with the Taliban and still has influence.”
Even though Safia was able to pull together some money before she was deported, she has not been able to find anywhere stable for her and her children to live and no way of making a living.
Of the estimated 800,000 undocumented Afghan refugees and migrants who were returned from Iran between 1 June and 23 July 2025, Zuhal Nabi, a communications associate with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says that 153,000 were women. It said of these 153,000 women, 8% were “female headed households”, deported back to Afghanistan alone with their children without a husband or male guardian.
All and where women’s rights have been stripped back to the bone.
Safia and thousands like her have been forcibly returned to a country operating under an effective system of gender apartheid, where women cannot rent homes without a male guardian, where they are barred from most forms of paid employment and cannot even visit a health clinic without a man escorting them.
Human rights and aid organisations are warning that the surge of single women who have been deported from Iran in the last few weeks has already overwhelmed the few support systems left, leaving many women-headed households trapped in poverty and exposed to abuse.
Reporters from Zan Times talked to 14 sources, including 9 women like Safia who have been forced to return to Afghanistan from Iran with their children but without a male guardian, all of whom say they are struggling with finding shelters and food and are facing a maze of legal, economic, and cultural restrictions under Taliban rule.
Fahima*, who returned to Afghanistan in June, says no landlord will rent to her. “They tell me outright that Taliban rules forbid it. I’ve been couch-surfing with relatives since I arrived. The only way to get a house is if a male relative signs the lease.”
Several rental agents who agreed to be interviewed said that it was impossible for them to rent out housing to single or unaccompanied women. “All rental agreements must be registered with the Taliban intelligence. If we rent to an unaccompanied woman, we risk imprisonment,” one owner of a small real estate company in Herat said. “It’s just not worth it.”
The lack of housing is matched by a lack of work. Raqia*, a recently returned widow, says the only available jobs are underground and precarious. “Even if a woman has skills, like tailoring or hairdressing, she must work in secret, at home. In Iran, I worked in a handbag factory. Here, I can’t work outside at all.”
Almost all of the women talked of the grief of losing everything and being sent back to Afghanistan with nothing.
Sabera*, 45, from Kunduz, recalls how she lost everything. Her family was expelled abruptly. “They didn’t even let us take our furniture. We left with just one set of clothes each,” she says, “The Iranian police beat my sons so badly they couldn’t eat. I had to take them to the hospital often. My children now suffer from trauma. No one listens to us. We are refugees — we have no rights.”
Maida*, 45, moved to Iran with her son after her husband, a police officer under the previous government, died in a military operation. She says when she was detained by police in Iran, she was alone, queuing for bread. “They didn’t let me go home to get my son. They just took me to the deportation camp in Shandiz and sent me back to Herat.”
Now living with extended relatives, Maida faces the impossible choice of staying separated from her son or risking another dangerous journey back. “I can’t stay here, away from my child, dependent on relatives but without a passport and with Iran no longer issuing visas, I don’t know how to get back to him. I can’t live like this but I don’t know what to do.”
A 32-year-old, single mother who lost her husband in a construction site accident five years ago, was deported with her children in late June. “I worked with my hands, my palms are like those of a 60-year-old woman. They didn’t even let me collect my belongings. My life’s savings are gone.”
Somaya now lives in Kabul in a bare room with a woven mat on the floor. “There’s no work, even for men. Taliban officers stop me and criticise my hijab. They tell me to wear a burqa.”
* Names have been changed to protect identities.
