TEHRAN: Shirin has never faced such a dilemma. The 19-year-old Iranian has to choose between her Afghan refugee husband, who could be repatriated to his post-Taliban homeland at any time, and her parents and country.
Three years ago she defied her parents and married Ahmad in a go-it-alone decision, never anticipating the consequences.
“Many of the girls who married Afghans were too young to have any idea what they were doing,” Shirin said. “They fell in love, but it was only later that they realized they were in trouble.”
Iran, home to some two million Afghans, says women who are married to Afghans are regarded, according to Afghan law, as Afghan nationals and that they will have to return home with their spouses.
“If an Afghan man marries a girl, say Iranian or of other nationalities, the Afghan law states that the woman takes on Afghan nationality,” said Mohammad Ali Salehi, an Interior Ministry official dealing with refugee affairs.
Under a voluntary repatriation scheme carried out under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), some 300,000 Afghans have returned to their homeland since March.
Shirin, one of an estimated 26,000 Iranian women who have married Afghans, does not want to go.
“I want to stay here. This is my country. Besides, I do not want to be far away from my parents,” she said as she looked around the tiny room where the couple live in the corner of a parking lot of a high-rise building in northern Tehran.
FEW BELONGINGS: Among their precious few belongings is a small stove and a cabinet.
“We lived in one of Tehran’s suburban areas. We had rented a tiny house there,” Shirin said. “But then we decided to move to Tehran when Ahmad was offered a job as a guard in this building because we could no longer afford the rent.”
Despite the hardships, she is desperate to stay in her country and dreads the thought that Ahmad could be snatched at any moment and sent back to Afghanistan without her.
“A number of relatives have told us to go to the Interior Ministry — or I don’t know — the governor’s office and tell them we are in trouble,” she said. “Otherwise they might catch my husband and send him to the border.”
For 24-year-old Ahmad, who fled to Iran nine years ago with his family to escape bitter tribal fighting, Kapisa in northern Afghanistan is a different world where he left his memories of childhood behind.
Ahmad, who earns just $62 a month in Tehran, would love to return to his home town to seek his fortune, although he is sympathetic to his wife’s feelings.
“I would love to go back to my country with my family but I want it in a way that she can come back here to see her parents,” he said.
Shirin is reluctant. It will not be an easy choice for her.
“It’s not easy to divorce your mate. Nor can I forget my parents and leave them behind,” she said.
NO FORCED REPATRIATIONS: With the interim Afghan President Hamid Karzai strengthening his authority despite security risks, Iran wants Afghan refugees to return to home as soon as possible.
Iran has officially denied sporadic reports that it is arresting Afghans without papers allowing them to be in the country and expelling them.”
“We do not force Afghans back. It is a voluntary programme overseen by the UNHCR,” Salehi said.
The European Union’s special envoy to Afghanistan also denied the reports.
“The Iranian authorities have been very cooperative in Afghanistan and treated Afghan refugees very well,” Francesc Vendrell said during a visit to Tehran in early October.
Strict interpretations of Islamic law have been relaxed in many parts of Afghanistan since the Taliban government was overthrown late last year by an opposition alliance backed by US air power.
The Taliban’s religious police had required women to cover themselves from head to toe, including their faces, in shapeless traditional garments called burqas. Women were also prevented from working and girls were not allowed to go to school.
“I’m more worried that I would have to leave my parents and homeland than the plight women might be subjected to in Afghanistan,” Shirin said. “I know that the stern laws are kind of gone with the Taliban’s collapse.”
What concerns Shirin more is whether she would be allowed back into Iran if she has to move to Afghanistan.
“They can get Afghan passports and obtain visas from our embassy there if they wanted to enter Iran,” Salehi said.
But the costly, bureaucratic and time consuming procedure of obtaining a visa to return to her homeland is of little comfort to Shirin.
“When you marry someone, you shouldn’t be forced by the government to choose,” between husband and homeland, she said.—Reuters