Cash Opens Iran’s Border

On the road from this provincial capital to the frontier town of Zabol, Iran’s policy of snaring Afghan refugees who sneak across its closed border is visible at every checkpoint.

Take the dozen Afghans without identification cards pressed against a barred window of a building at the Kouleh Sangee police post, insisting they are Iranian Baluchis, not illegal immigrants. Or the 28 Afghan men and the 5-year-old boy detained by Iranian soldiers in a wasteland near the Ghargharouk checkpoint, three miles from Afghanistan.

What is less apparent, however, is another common result of Iranian policy. Consider the nickname locals have for Afghan refugees--”white gold”--or the widely held belief that the 585-mile border between the two countries, closed last month, is a sieve, at least to those who can pay.

Many Afghans yearning to join the 2.6 million refugees from their nation already in Iran have enough cash to become cargo in human- smuggling operations, which line the pockets of Iranian drivers, authorities and businesspeople.

For about $125 a person--the price has gone up almost $40 since the border was closed, according to the Iranian economic newspaper Abrar Eghtesadi--Afghans are shuttled by car, pickup truck and bus from the border to Iran’s frontier towns. Before reaching the handful of checkpoints along the two-lane highways in this barren region, vehicles stop to unload illegal passengers, who scamper into the foothills to sneak past patrols and rejoin their rides down the road.

Once in towns like Zabol, they scatter and head for Afghan enclaves throughout Iran.

Although smugglers face fines of $125 or more and can have their vehicles impounded for six months, few Iranians have been dissuaded from the business. Unlike traffickers of heroin, which is also called white gold in Iran, smugglers of humans do not risk a death sentence.

One taxi driver who has ferried illegal Afghans and gave his name as Amir said border guards and soldiers at checkpoints often will accept bribes of about $40 per passenger.

But such clandestine operations come at a price. The seemingly endless arrival of Afghans in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, has driven up the cost of living, residents complain. The price of bread has risen tenfold in the past few months.

Adding to the inflation are the prices charged by Afghan and Iranian smugglers who transport Iranian oil, ceramics and clothing into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for economic gain. Discarded gasoline jerrycans piled high next to the Kouleh Sangee police post illustrate Iranian authorities’ struggle to curb the illegal exports.

Just as with the smugglers of humans, smugglers of goods are not dissuaded by the threat of fines and impoundment, nor by government rules that limit drivers to filling their gas tanks once every two days. In Zabol, dozens of young Iranians and Afghans line the road to the border, illegally selling gas from plastic containers to smugglers and others.

The smuggling of refugees goes back at least two decades, to when Afghans began immigrating westward to escape the Soviet invasion of their homeland. Iranians welcomed their neighbors, who share the Muslim faith, as they did Iraqi and Kurdish refugees during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. But the influx from various borders became overwhelming, and Iranians grew to resent the added burden on their struggling economy.

Iran has tried since 1992 to curb the growth of its Afghan population. Although Iranian immigration officials insist that no new Afghans have arrived since the border was sealed, some aid groups say hundreds of refugees still pour into the country each day.

One common route is from the Afghan city of Zaranj to Zabol. Abrar Eghtesadi, the economic newspaper, reported Saturday that more than 60 refugees travel this route daily.

Once in Zabol, the refugees blend into crowds of Iranian Baluchis who struggle to survive in the town, which is facing a severe water shortage brought on by drought and the damming of a cross-border river several years ago by the Taliban.

Many of the Afghans who crossed into Iran since the border was closed head for the only refugee camp in town, an overcrowded facility called Niatak. They live there illegally, always in fear of being discovered by the camp’s Iranian manager.

Officially, the compound of domed, one-room huts constructed of mud and straw houses 5,000 people, said Reza Azargoshasb, Iranian chief of Zabol’s immigration office. Two schools offer primary education to camp children.

According to Azargoshasb, the U.N. pays the upkeep for the 12-year-old camp, which has electricity and water lines running into the compound but not to its homes.

Dozens of 20-foot-deep wells dug into fields are bone dry. Residents say tap water is available to them for only two hours a day from the community spigot.

Families live in dark rooms abuzz with flies, with only a shoe-size hole in the roof letting in light and serving as a chimney for the fires that residents light for warmth on cold nights.

In the hut of one Sunni Muslim family, 15-year-old Nourzaie sat on a threadbare carpet, rocking her 3-month-old on one knee and listening to her 30-year-old husband describe daily life for the family.

“This place is better than living in town, because we have little money,” said the husband, Rahman Nazbibi. “The government helps us. We get rice, cooking oil and some sugar for free.”

Such impoverishment doesn’t stop the flow of refugees. In the Shiite Muslim portion of the compound, Mohammed Mohammadi squatted atop a wall outside the illegally acquired hut he shares with his wife and their four children.

They arrived a month ago from the western Afghan city of Herat, paying $50 each to be smuggled across the border. They faced death at the hands of the Taliban, given their religious differences with the Sunni regime, he said.

They don’t plan to go home. “What is better about going back?” he asked. “There is nothing left.”