Is Iran meddling in Afghanistan?

President Hamid Karzai, in meetings in Washington this week, said Iran is a valuable ally. But Afghan officials have grown increasingly wary of their Western neighbor.

from the August 8, 2007 edition

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Afghanistan struggles with refugees

The same is true with regard to Afghanistan itself. Earlier this year, Iran began deporting thousands of Afghan refugees. Though Iran was perfectly at liberty to do so, the abruptness of the decision, combined with the sheer number of deportees and the fact that many of them had legal documents to remain in Iran, pointed to a motive beyond expedience or impatience.

Water-rights issues of crucial importance to Iran are now in the balance, as well as Afghanistan's willingness to support the US and Europe in their anti-Iran campaign. The sudden arrival of thousands of jobless Afghans into a country ill-prepared to absorb them was designed to remind Kabul of Iran's ability to make life difficult for Afghanistan, critics say.

Here, along Afghanistan's border with Iran, beneath a massive admonitory portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini, the buses still often come more than once an hour.

They bring Afghans like Mir Mohammed Safari, a teenager who says he lived in Iran legally for seven years before being rounded up from his workplace without notice, taken here, and then shunted unceremoniously across the border.

He is one of thousands of Afghan workers who fled to Iran, either for safety or employment, who are now being thrown out.

For his new life in Afghanistan, he has only what he could fit into a plastic bag. "From everything, I brought this," he says with a wry smile.

Fellow refugee Javed Sharifi squints in the sunlight, as the wind whips violently over this arid border checkpoint.

Mr. Sharifi has only 500 Afghanis – $10 – to try to get to his home on the opposite side of Afghanistan, some 400 miles away. Says Sharifi: "I have no idea how I am going to get to Takhar."

• Mr. Sappenfield is the New Delhi correspondent for the Monitor and USA Today.

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