Crossing borders: the fighting for survival of a Hazara Family

Ahmed’s family is a Hazara family like many others in the Gizab district of Daykundi province. Life has never been easy out there, but the residents have been able to adapt and make the valleys of Gizab fertile and fruitful in the last forty years. In July, however, something changed forever.

Since 1987 Ahmed has worked in various sectors of the education department of the Gizab district for over ten years. He has worked hard to build schools and make them efficient. “I was able to have more than fifty schools listed in the register of the Ministry of Education. Then I led the Rural Construction Company. I ran for elections, but I was not elected. I could have been the voice of my people ”.

The last few years have been very tough for Ahmed: the Taliban killed eight of his relatives, including his brother. Ahmed has been the only breadwinner for over a year: two families, his own and that of his brother, sixteen people in all, depend on him for their livelihood. Despite the enormous difficulties Ahmed has to face, he does not give up and with great dignity he manages to feed everyone and send the youngest children to school. His daughter Maryam loves being in class with her friends: in the midst of so much pain, school represents a peaceful moment for many children and young people in the province of Daykundi. For Ahmed’s family, the situation changed radically in July: the Taliban arrived in Daykundi, they conquered the province, district after district, and when they arrived in Tagab Dar they blew up Ahmed’s house. Sixteen people suddenly didn’t have a roof over their heads anymore, their belongings had been destroyed and they were unable to protect themselves from the impending frost of the Hazaristan winter. For Ahmed and his family, this was the beginning of very difficult, almost tragic months, initially spent under the trees, while the summer climate lasted. Since the beginning of September, thousands of Daykundi Hazara residents have shared the same fate: the Taliban regained full power and the governor of the Daykundi district who, according to Amnesty International, had allegedly killed cold-bloodedly four citizens who had just surrendered, wasted no time and ordered the residents of Kendir, Tagab Dar, Rabat-e-Khoshk, Dan Golia Zai, Chpa Joi, Majboor Joi and Dan Nala to immediately leave their homes, their lands, and go. Where to? Into tents, under the trees, to makeshift refugee camps.

“But now the winter season has arrived and we can no longer resist. We must try to leave the country, at any cost, even if I know it is dangerous for my family. Hundreds and hundreds of families in the Gizab district are displaced and hopeless. Thousands of people, including children, women and the elderly, live in a state of absolute deprivation. The inhabitants of Gharijat, Kendir, Tagab Dar and many other villages have no bread to eat and nowhere to spend the night. “

The only choice is to leave Afghanistan aware of the situation to face. The borders with Iran and Pakistan are closed, in many cases militarily controlled. Dozens of Afghans lose their lives in those mountains every day, trying to cross that imaginary line that would allow them to start hoping for a different future again. But Ahmed can’t do anything different and he is well aware of it: “Afghan people are starving: leaving, even illegally, is the only solution. All the jobs that existed before have gone up in smoke, they no longer exist. Only one market keeps thriving: the smuggling of goods and people. Hundreds of thousands of people live in a miserable condition and neighbouring states have also shut down their border gates to the Afghan people. Therefore, if you want to leave ,you can jeopardize your life. You risk ending up in prisons where the treatment is inhumane, where no food is given. But the Afghan people have no choice: they are allowing hundreds of thousands of people to fall into the hands of human traffickers.”

Ahmed’s family eventually left: sixteen people forced to leave their land, without any prospects, without knowing what their future life would bring , with the awareness of being in the hands of traffickers and men willing to use any means to earn from their suffering. They reached the province of Nimroz on the borders with Iran and Pakistan, and here they waited a few days, before realizing how to face the crossing and where they had to head for. “We have waited several nights. As soon as there was a favourable one, we left. There was a storm, there was darkness everywhere: that was the exact moment. The traffickers removed us from a house where we were waiting and took us across the border. It was 8pm on Friday night, Kabul time, when we entered Iran. We passed Zahedan and around midnight we arrived in Nosrat Abad. They made us wait there for hours, in a house made available by the Baluchs.”

This is the fate of those who choose to leave the country: to entrust their lives and that of their loved ones in the hands of criminals who profit from suffering and despair. Most refugees are well aware that traffickers mostly make false promises and are well conscious that the money they pay fills the coffers of a criminal organization, and that it doesn’t certainly grant the success of the operation. There is no guarantee. Those who decide to go out illegally have only one choice: to put themselves in the hands of people who do not even have the interest to appear honest, because they are aware that they are the only alternative. Many know well that reassurances are mostly automatic lies, that once they cross the border, traffickers will very often disappear and leave them to their fate, that a “ we are leaving in two days “ can turn into a “month or longer”. It is desperation and resignation that lead hundreds of thousands of Afghans into the clutches of traffickers. People who have no other choice and who must try to leave in any possible way if they want to survive. Some of the traffickers do it to save their lives, to be able to earn two pennies and be able to escape too. The new walls and the barbed wire fences at the gates of Europe only fatten the coffers of traffickers, who are the only possible choice left for thousands of poor people.

“At two in the morning they brought us several motorcycles. They got us on it, three people for each motorbike, and we left. We passed a police station. We arrived near the city of Bam, in an area called Faraj. We walked for a long time, passing several outposts in the middle of the mountains. We were tired and desperate, we just wanted a place to rest for a while. We met the traffickers again, but this time they hadn’t provided a room for us. We had to rent one, without any documents, for a very high sum. We thought we would have a break, the chance to rest for a while, before resuming travelling at night, under cover of darkness. We waited for the traffickers for a long time, until we realized they weren’t coming. The police had surrounded the building where we were resting. It was an everlasting time. What to do next? I wanted to try to run away, but how could we manage to do it with all these little children? We decided to surrender to the security forces. Once again, we had no choice. “

The Iranian police are anything but indulgent with Afghan refugees. Arriving in Iran means being safe from the Taliban, but not from the Iranian Law, which is proving to be increasingly harsh and intransigent with Afghan refugees, especially the Hazara, who are oppressed and discriminated even in Iran. A Hazara refugee in Iran knows that his life may not have changed much compared to when he was in Afghanistan. Many, especially teenagers, live in abandoned houses, in groups of ten or twenty people, they go to work for entrepreneurs who accept to hire them irregularly so that they can pay them a pittance and can treat them as real slaves. Some Hazara refugees tell that they have to live in hiding in Iran as in Afghanistan and that they can only go out at night to look for food in restaurant leftovers. Their goal, in fact, is not to stay and build a new life in Iran, but to work there as much as possible, save some fresh money which will sadly end up in the hands of traffickers again, who have to bring the refugees from Iran to Turkey where they can try to enter Europe. Very few, however, succeed on the first attempt: most of them are arrested and repatriated to Afghanistan before being able to try the new border crossing.

“We were arrested by the Iranian police, they took us to a station. They searched us, with no respect, taking away everything we had, including the few objects we used to keep communications, such as cell phones and chargers. After a whole day, at 7 pm, they took us to a field, where there was a very large room. We spent the night there, without food and water. At dawn they arrived and brought us half a loaf of bread each. Time never passed and it still was not clear what could be of us. The following night we were relocated to another camp in Zahedan. It was midnight, or maybe even later, so they didn’t accept us at the camp. We had to wait outside, in the mountains, in the cold of the night. My children were freezing, shivering with cold. We couldn’t do anything. “

In these moments, the fate of the refugees is in the hands of prison guards and officials of the Iranian police who certainly don’t worry about human rights. Yet, there is no choice: complaining, or rebelling, would expose the refugees to a far worse fate.

“When they arrived they took us to cells. The camp was in an indecent state and the Iranian police’s treatment of Afghan refugees is appalling. There is no respect for hygiene, for health standards, there is no food. They beat us, they always used violence against us. They were among the hardest and most difficult days of my life. “

Ahmed is suffering a lot, but he has to look strong for his family, once again he has no choice. Everything that is terrible for him, for his children and the even younger children of his brother it is even more so. Ahmed knows well enough that two large families depend on him, on the strength he manages to transmit to them, on the refusal to surrender and to continue to resist, silently, relentlessly. Time in the Zahedan camp never seems to pass, it seems as if there is no way out. A few days later, however, at ten in the morning, A few days later, however, at ten in the morning, Ahmed and his family were taken back to Afghanistan. Their attempt to cross the border and reach Tehran had failed.

“We are in Nimroz, again. We are sad, terribly tired, and we don’t know what to do. We crossed the border three times, but we didn’t make it. The fourth time we did it, we hoped to be free at last, but we were deported back to Afghanistan. We don’t know what to do. “

If he story of Ahmed’s family were that of a common family, it would end here: four attempts, the savings that should grant survival during the journey almost gone and a lot of resignation. But Ahmed’s is not an ordinary family: they are Hazara from Daykundi, inhabitants of one of the poorest and most isolated lands in the world, used to repetitively falling down, but capable to get up over and over again. The voice of little Maryam, Ahmed’s daughter, tells of the pride of a people that for more than one hundred and fifty years have resisted unaided the most disparate attempts to eradicate their cultural and ethnic heritage. And in fact, needless to say, the story of Ahmed’s family did not end there: just as I’m writing write these lines, I get a message, this time a welcome one. Ahmed and his relatives tried for the fifth time and they crossed the border again. No one can say what will happen now, but what is certain is that Ahmed will not give up and will not stop fighting in order to create better opportunities for him and his family. His thoughts, however, always go out to his land: “I pray to God that the conditions will be favourable again, that I can return once and for all to the land of my loved ones and of my ancestors.”