In 2001, after the US bombing defeated the Taliban regime in the desert wastelands of Dasht-e-Leili in northern Afghanistan, more than two thousand Taliban prisoners were stuffed into metal shipping containers and left to suffocate under a searing sun. They had surrendered, unarmed, defeated, but were slaughtered anyway. The massacre, ordered by Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum and carried out by his private militia, was not a battle. It was revenge. Cowardice dressed as strength. The bodies were dumped in unmarked graves and buried under sand, and silence.
That atrocity marked the moral failure of Afghanistan’s warlords who were empowered only after the US bombing campaign. But it also set a precedent: that Afghan lives, especially poor, anonymous, rural Afghan lives. could be discarded without consequence.
Nearly a quarter-century later, Afghan suffering is once again being buried, this time not in Jowzjan, but across the western border in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In June 2025, following humiliating Israeli airstrikes on its nuclear and military facilities, Iran responded not with effective retaliation against its attackers, but with rage against the powerless: Afghan refugees.
Hundreds of thousands of Afghans, may be a million, some born in Iran, others having lived there for decades, are being rounded up, brutalized, and expelled en masse. Iranian security forces are raiding homes, separating families, beating workers, and tossing them across the border like trash. Afghan migrants have had their wages stolen by employers, their rent deposits withheld by landlords, and their legal residency documents torn to pieces. There is no compensation. No process. No dignity.
This is not deportation. This is expulsion with a vengeance, a calculated purge masked in bureaucratic formality but executed with cruelty and impunity.
Most grotesque of all is the narrative Iran now pushes: that somehow, these poor Afghan workers, day laborers, and refugees, many of them illiterate, undocumented, and barely surviving, are to blame for Iran’s intelligence failures and battlefield defeats. Tehran, humiliated by Israeli precision and unable to strike back effectively, has turned to a fantasy, that the weakest, most voiceless people in its borders were the spies, the saboteurs, the cause of its shame. The truth is simpler: Afghans had no part in this war, and no voice in its making. But they are being made to pay for it.
The hypocrisy is staggering. A regime that positions itself as the defender of Muslims and the enemy of oppression is now punishing fellow Muslims for its own geopolitical defeats. Tehran broadcasts outrage over Gaza while it brutalizes Afghan children in Mashhad. It decries Zionism while stealing from undocumented workers who built its cities and cleaned its homes. It speaks of Islamic solidarity, but treats Afghans like a contaminant to be cleansed.
And here lies the bitter irony.
The same Taliban whose surrendered fighters were massacred in Dasht-e-Leili, and who themselves have committed atrocities in the war, who now rule harshly, including banning women from education and public life, are now providing humanitarian corridors, logistical coordination, and safe return for those very refugees Iran is throwing out.
In provinces like Nimroz, Herat, and Farah, Afghan businessmen, local charities, and tribal elders have mobilized to meet the surge. Free buses are shuttling people from border crossings. Mosques, warehouses, and guesthouses are being converted into shelters. NGOs and a huge number of Afghan businessmen are distributing food, water, medicine, and cash. Convoys are moving safely not because of international agencies, but because the Taliban have provided order, security, and protection, however flawed their rule may be in other domains.
This is not a defense of the Taliban. Their repression of women, their past atrocities, and their ideological rigidity are all real, ongoing, and must change. But in this specific moment, they are acting where Iran is failing. They are extending dignity where Iran is inflicting shame.
Iran, humiliated by a foreign enemy, has chosen to save face by turning on a voiceless, stateless people. It has opted for scapegoating over responsibility, cruelty over courage. It has exposed the hollowness of its slogans and the selective morality of its politics.
And so, while Iranian officials draft angry statements against Israel, it is Afghan merchants in Kandahar, and Herat who are paying for blankets. While Iranian clerics sermonize about Muslim brotherhood, it is Taliban governors in Herat who are securing safe routes for returning families. The ones once buried are now the ones enabling the living.
Afghans have been betrayed again and again, by warlords, foreign powers, neighbors, and even fellow Muslims. Yet in their endurance, in their memory of places like Dasht-e-Leili, and in their refusal to collapse under exile, they are revealing the truth: that justice in this region is rarely delivered from podiums, but sometimes, just sometimes, emerges from the rubble of humiliation.
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If there were ever a time to join us, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers our journalism and sustains our future. Support the Dawat Media Center from as little as $/€10 – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. Thank you
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