Afghan Execution Protests Anger Iran

Neighbours at odds about reports Afghan refugees have been executed in Iran for trafficking narcotics.

Relations between Tehran and Kabul are under strain following a series of demonstrations across Afghanistan over reports of executions of Afghan refugees in Iran for alleged drug smuggling.

In a wave of protests outside the Iranian embassy in Kabul this month, protesters burned pictures of Iranian officials and clashed with security guards. Demonstrations also took place in the city of Herat, near the Iranian border, and in other Afghan provinces.

With Tehran refusing to confirm how many alleged executions have been conducted, speculation about the number has varied widely.

The Iranian authorities have, meanwhile, protested to Afghan diplomats about the reported deaths and the anti-Iran rallies around Afghanistan.

Standing amongst worshippers in the yard of the central mosque of Herat, Masuma, 55, shouted, “Brothers, my son was executed in Iran 10 days ago and he was innocent. The Iranians won’t let me have his body.

“They have executed my son and now demand lots of money from me for my son’s corpse. What should I do? Help me for God’s sake!”

She told IWPR that her son, Jawad Ahmad, lost his job in Herat eight months ago and had travelled to Iran illegally to look for work.

She heard nothing from him until he called her last month from Iran’s Torbat Jam prison. Crying bitterly, she said, “My son said that he had been convicted for smuggling drugs, something he said he knew nothing about, and would be executed in ten days.”

Slapping her own face, she screamed, “The murderous Iranians, they are the worst enemies of Afghans. They are worse than infidels.” Her elder son, she added, had gone to Iran to fetch the body, but she said that the Iranians had demanded 3,400 US dollars to release it.

Sayed Masum Badakhsh, the Afghan charge d’affaires in Iran, told IWPR in a telephone interview that the embassy was still investigating the alleged executions. “The number of executed individuals may not be more than ten,” he said.

However, security officials in Herat consider the number to be far higher.

An Afghan border police official in Islam Qala near the Iranian border, who declined to give his name, told IWPR, “During the past two weeks, 20 corpses have been transported from Iran to Herat. Five bodies were people who were ill and had passed away in Iran, but the other 15 were executed.

“The central government has ordered us not to give an exact number of executed people in Iran to the media.”

According to Najibollah Kabuli, a lawmaker who led the demonstrations against Iran in Kabul, more than 45 Afghans, most of them innocent, have been executed. He said only a small number of their corpses have been returned to Afghanistan.

Separately, Kabuli said that he had been told that many Afghans had been turned out of their homes by the Iranian military, “We have also received reports from Iran that the houses of hundreds of Afghans have been burned by Iranian soldiers in Yazd city,” he said.

Another lawmaker, Nazir Ahmad Hanifi, said a parliamentary committee had visited Iran two months ago to investigate cases of those imprisoned accused of drug smuggling. It found that 3,000 had been convicted of such charges, and were on death row, Hanifi said.

“Based on reports received from Afghans in Iran, about 70 Afghan youths have been executed in different cities of Iran so far, out of which [the bodies of] 40 of them have been returned o Afghanistan through the Islam Qala and Nimroz border posts,” he said.

Iranian diplomatic staff in Afghanistan declined to give any further information on this issue. "Until now, we haven't received exact information about these cases, the number of Afghans executions and for what they were convicted. We don't have this information," a diplomat said.

But Iran's ambassador to Kabul was quoted by state-run PressTV as saying the protests were part of an organised effort to undermine the “historic ties” between the two neighbours.

“We think there are hidden hands behind these protests, it is not the work of an individual or a group. It's a scenario created by certain embassies,” Fada-Hossein Maleki was quoted as saying on May 8.

“Some western countries aren't happy about Iran-Afghanistan relations and are trying to undermine these ties but they will not succeed,” the ambassador said.

He did not give a figure for the number executed but the broadcaster said it was six, without saying how it had learned the figure.

The Iranian foreign ministry summoned the Afghan ambassador in Tehran to complain over the reports of the execution of Afghans and the anti-Iran protests.

But the Afghan foreign minister, Zalmai Rasul, said in response to questions in parliament that Tehran and Kabul had signed an agreement under which they should inform each other of court cases against each other’s citizens.

Iran, he said, had given no such information about the executions of the Afghan nationals.

Confronting Rasul in parliament, lawmaker Sayed Hussein Alemi asked, “If we are unable even to get the names of the executed people after one month through the embassy and consulate, how is the embassy serving its country?”

Rasul replied, “Iranian sources told me about the execution of nine Afghans, but they have not submitted their names and other details to the ministry of foreign affairs of Afghanistan yet.”

The issue of Afghan refugees in Iran has long been a source of conflict between the two countries. Although the exact number of refugees is unclear, some two million are believed to reside there, many hundreds of thousands illegally.

Waves of Afghan refugees arrived in Iran following the communist coup in 1968; after the collapse of the pro-Soviet regime in 1992 and during the subsequent civil war. Some have not returned to Afghanistan due to insecurity and unemployment, while other Afghans have emigrated to Iran to find work.

Zia Ahmad is an IWPR trainee reporter in Herat.