Over the course of an hour on a recent night, the bus waiting in the Herat station filled with passengers. Mostly young men, they had no luggage, just the clothes on their backs, maybe a bag with some bread and water for the long road ahead of them.
That road is leading them to Iran.
Every day, multiple buses rumble out of conflicts western city of Herat, carrying hundreds of people to the border. There they disembark, connect with their smugglers and trek for days, sometimes crammed into pickup trucks bumping through wastelands, sometimes on foot through treacherous mountains in the darkness, eluding guards and thieves.
MASS STARVATION LOOMS IN AFGHANISTAN AS HALF THE COUNTRY FACES HUNGER UNDER TALIBAN RULE
Afghans sits in a bus in Herat, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021, for a 300-mile trip south to Nimrooz near the Iranian border.
(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
Once in Iran, most will stay there to look for work. But a few hope to go farther.
“We’re going to get to Europe,” said Haroun, a 20-year-old sitting in the bus next to his friend Fuad. Back in their village there is no work. “We have no choice, the economy here is a wreck. Even if it means our death on the way, we accept that.”
Afghans are streaming across the border into Iran in accelerating numbers, driven by desperation. Since the Taliban takeover in mid-August, Afghanistan’s economic collapse has accelerated, robbing millions of work and leaving them unable to feed their families. In the past three months, more than 300,000 people have crossed illegally into Iran, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, and more are coming at the rate of 4,000 to 5,000 a day.
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Back home, nothing has changed. He goes to the square every day but finds no work, he said. So he will try taking his family again. “After winter,” he said. “It’s too cold now for the children to cross.”
Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city, is a main hub for Afghans from other parts of the country making their way to Iran.
The city is only about an hour’s drive from the Iranian border, but the frontier is too heavily patrolled here. Instead, migrants embark on a 300-mile (480-kilometer) trip south to Nimrooz, a remote region of deserts and mountains that is Afghanistan’s most sparsely populated province. Here, the migrants cross into a corner of Pakistan, from where they can more easily slip into Iran.
It’s an arduous journey. Reza Rezaie, a Herat resident, made the trip with his 17-year-old son. The most harrowing moment comes at the Iranian-Pakistani border, where migrants must ascend and then descend Moshkelghar, literally “Difficult Mountain,” on narrow trails along steep drop-offs.
Two Afghan men pray at a bus station in Herat, Afghanistan, on Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021, before they embark on a bus for a 300-mile trip south to Nimrooz near the Iranian border.
(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
“It’s pitch darkness and you can’t turn on flashlights for security,” he recalled. On the way up, they walk in single file, each holding the scarf of the person in front of them. Descending on the Iranian side, they gingerly crawl down so they don’t tumble off the edge. “If you fall, no one will help you because they will fall too,” he said.
At one point in Iran, he and others hid in the luggage compartment under a bus to get around checkpoints. He worked for a few weeks doing construction in Shiraz before he was caught in a police raid and expelled.
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But he is undaunted. His father recently died, so he has to wait for the 40-day mourning period to end. Then he’ll try Iran again.
“What else can I do? Here, there is nothing,” he said.
