AFGHANISTAN - Impoverished Migrants Return from Iran

Mohammad Saeed had just turned 18 when he fled to Iran with his parents and younger brother and sister, escaping the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in 2021.

Now Saeed and his family are among thousands who have returned home to escape the economic crisis in Iran triggered by the conflict with the U.S. and Israel.

The family came back nearly empty-handed, Saeed said.

“The Iranian currency had fallen so sharply,” he said, that the family’s ‌savings, held in Iranian rials, lost over two-thirds of their value.

For decades, Iran’s industrialized and much larger economy offered Afghans an escape from poverty and, in the 1990s and again since 2021, from the harsh rule of the Taliban.

Now, Iran’s economy has collapsed so severely that many Afghans said they saw returning as their only option. They are coming back with their wives and daughters, despite the severe restrictions on women in Afghanistan, with curbs on their education, travel and employment.

-www.reuters.com, 16 September 2026

Commentary: It is hard to picture conditions so dire that one would return to a country like Afghanistan to escape poverty. But the collapse of Iran’s economy after the war with the US and Israel, has caused these migrants to return to a land with virtually no rights for women and its own form of poverty.

With rising gas and food prices occupying the news in Western countries, it is good to reflect on how spoiled we are considering the life-or-death conditions faced by millions around the world.

It is our duty to pray for those affected and for the gospel to reach migrants such as these, despite severe Islamic restrictions.

May God grant freedom in Christ to those in both Iran and Afghanistan, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Galatians 5:1a).

(See Freedom in Christ, Item #2400, $10.95.)