Deported from Iran, teenager urges urgent assistance

FEROZKOH (Pajhwok): Deported from Iran, an Afghan teenager has asked the government and donor organizations for urgent help.

Abdul Sabour, 16, a resident of western Ghor, recently deported from Iran spent 11 days and nights traveling to neighboring Iran.

He told Pajhwok Afghan News that three months ago he traveled to Iran after dealing with smugglers along with some other teenagers without having any idea about illegal migration.

Faced extreme difficulties while traveling to Iran and even traveled some way with bare feet, Sabour said, adding: “We were eight and traveling from Ghor to Nimroz and it was my first tripe.”

The kid said his family was facing an extreme financial crisis and decided to travel along with fellow villagers to Iran in order to earn a living there.

“The smugglers put us into a Toyota car and the space was overcrowded, we could not move and it was very hard,” he explained.

He said they were traveling through mountains and valleys and difficult areas so that Iranian security forces could not find and even they witnessed the deaths of some young people.

Sabour said he sustained leg injuries from walking too much but at last returned home with empty hands after the Iranian forces arrested them on the border.

Sher Ahmad, another 17-year-old teenager from Ghor said: “We didn’t have anything to eat at home, so I decided with my cousin brother to go to Iran. We went to Nimroz and the asked the smugglers to take us to Iran through Pakistani border.”

He continued: “But we couldn’t reach Iran and we were caught by the Iranian police, they forced us to wash the dishes in their stations and clean rooms, they insulted us, beat us until one day they brought us to the border, handed us over to Afghan border forces and then arrived home.”

The two youths called on the government and child support organizations to provide them with jobs and education so that they would not be forced to migrate illegally.

However, Maulvi Abdul Hai Zaeem, director of information and culture, said the International Organization for Migration (IOM) had provided those youth who had recently returned from neighboring Iran with 22,000 to 34,000 afghanis.

He said they were striving to attract more such aid from international organizations.

sa

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