Afghan academics, students fleeing Iran face bleak future

Refugees from all walks of life are being expelled from Iran, among them teachers, academics and students from Afghanistan, with an evident surge in refugees fleeing Iran for Afghanistan in June after Israeli airstrikes hit Iranian military targets.

According to official Iranian figures, more than 60,000 Afghan students were studying at Iranian universities as of December 2024. Mandana Tisheyar, deputy vice-chancellor of Iran’s Allameh Tabataba’i University, said during a seminar last year on Afghan migrants in Iran that the number of Afghan students in Tehran surpassed that of Kabul. At the same time, more than 600,000 Afghan children were enrolled in Iranian schools.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in a report on 30 June noted a huge surge in Afghans returning from Iran, with a record 256,000 people arriving last month alone to a country ill equipped to help them.

IOM noted the spike followed a 20 March deadline by the Iranian government requiring all undocumented Afghans to leave the country. Returns began accelerating in April and peaked in June, the UN agency said. On 25 June alone, just after the 23 June US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, 28,000 crossed back into Afghanistan from Iran in a single day.

Meanwhile, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that 36,100 Afghans returned from Iran in just one day on 26 June.

The 12-day conflict between Iran and Israel caused the daily crossing to skyrocket from about 5,000 to nearly 20,000, Arafat Jamal, a UNHCR representative in Afghanistan, said in late June.

“This has been exacerbated by the war, but I must say it has been part of an underlying trend that we have seen of returns from Iran, some of which are voluntary, but a large portion were also deportations,” he said.

“Iran was one of the few countries where Afghans from academic circles and other progressive-minded people could continue their work and education after 2021 (return of the Taliban). Now even that is being taken away,” Professor Ehsan Haidari, an educator in Kabul who is among the recent returnees from Iran, told University World News.

Haidari, a former professor of political science at one of Kabul’s private universities, sought refuge in Tehran after receiving threats from the Taliban for his alleged anti-Taliban views in education. While in Iran, he took on private tutoring roles and hoped to receive an international fellowship. That hope faded quickly as Iranian authorities increased pressure on Afghan nationals lacking proper residency documents and work permits.

“With international scholarships drying up (for Afghans) and no access to foreign exchange programmes, Iranian universities were the last bridge to connect or remain at par with the world. Now it’s getting shut too,” Haidari said.

Crackdown on undocumented refugees

Iran has historically hosted over 3.5 million Afghan refugees, many of whom fled decades ago during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent civil war.

Over the past two decades, Iran allowed limited educational access for Afghan children and welcomed some Afghan students into its universities, particularly in cities like Mashhad, Qom, and Zahedan. But that openness is vanishing.

In 2023, as part of its crackdown on undocumented Afghans, Iran’s Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology suspended the registration of students without passports and study visas from registering in Iranian universities. This ban is still in place.

Afghanistan’s Taliban regime claimed that up to 10,000 Afghans have been deported or returned voluntarily from Iran daily, citing figures from official border crossings such as Islam Qala in Herat and Milak in Nimroz provinces.

During a December press conference in Herat bordering Iran, Abdul Mutalib Haqqani, spokesperson for the Taliban Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, said: “In the past three months alone, nearly 900,000 people have returned or been expelled from Iran”. He noted that many arrive with no resources, no housing, and no work prospects.

Returnees

After the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, many university teachers across Afghanistan, like Haidari, were dismissed for ideological reasons, silenced for promoting critical thinking, or targeted for their past affiliations with international programmes, he said.

Female lecturers were immediately barred from teaching, while others reported being interrogated, threatened, or forced to revise curricula in line with the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic principles.

“It felt like decades of academic progress were erased overnight,” Haidari said.

The return of Afghan academics from Iran further amplifies this. “We are losing not just teachers, but thinkers and mentors who carried experience from abroad,” said Mohammad Rezazada, former director of a private university in Herat.

“We used to have professors who taught in Tehran or studied in Mashhad (in Iran), but now they’re back but jobless and fearful,” he stated.

At Kabul University, one of the country’s most prestigious institutions, over 160 professors resigned or fled since 2021. Herat University reportedly lost 75 faculty members, including senior researchers and department heads.

Many of the returning academics are unlikely to obtain academic posts in Afghanistan. The Taliban is actively replacing the former faculty members with their sympathisers, a number of former and current teachers told University World News.

“We have positions we can’t fill anymore,” said a senior administrator at Kabul University, requesting anonymity. “We are told to only recruit ‘ideologically fit’ candidates. But how can we build a university with that filter?”

Among those most affected are women educators, who are increasingly excluded from both education and employment.

In December 2022, the Taliban suspended all higher education for women. In 2023, they halted medical education for female students, triggering global outrage. Now, the return of women academics from Iran is compounding this regression.

“In Iran, I could still attend workshops, engage with diaspora scholars, and teach quietly,” said Sumaya Rahimi, a former political science lecturer, who has returned from Mashhad in Iran, where she was teaching privately.

“Back here, I can’t even walk into my old campus,” she added, referring to Afghanistan’s Herat University.