Brothers turn to Enemies
The ceasefire between Iran and Israel started almost two weeks ago. Since then, the Islamic Republic has begun the deportation of many Afghans in Iran, no matter if they are legal or illegal immigrants. My hometown, Mashhad, is close to the border with Afghanistan, and every year, there are thousands of Afghans flee there to run away from the ruthlessness of the Taliban or prior to that, the terrible battle that American forces with their partners brought to the country 2 decades before. Iran was a reasonable destination for Afghans since we share the same language and relatively the same culture. I had numerous Afghan friends while growing up in Mashhad and most of them were remarkably intelligent and hardworking. I never saw them as foreigners because I never saw the contrast. Yet, when I became older, I learned there was a bizarre sense of humiliation towards Afghans in Iran. Some use their ethnicity, Afghan/Afghani as a way to mock others and if we make a hierarchy of privileges for Iranian residents, they are at the bottom of the pyramid. They always have problems with education, job opportunities, and in some cases even finding a place to sleep, all because they are from Afghanistan.
The reason behind this mass exile is the assumption in the government that there have been some Mossad agents among Afghans in Iran and now we have to expel them all in the last couple of days, a large number of Afghans have been deported. In some circumstances, the police got their passports, tore them down, and broke their phones. This act is not human at all, this is dehumanizing the people who have been through the worst terrors of the world through all their lives. Afghans are by far the unluckiest group whose land was destroyed by the foreign (USA, Soviet Union, Britain) and the local (Taliban) forces in the last two centuries and they are still going through the worst no matter where they are.
Some Iranian Twitter users talk about "they are illegal" or "they don't work" and share this racist sentiment about the people of a country where basically war and death are a regular part of their daily routine and the same exact people flee to other countries and nag about the white being racist toward them. This is the hypocrisy that persists in the cycle of racism from a more decisive entity to a weaker one and it's shameful to observe this embarrassing status.
While the crisis of illegal immigrants is a vital topic to discuss and try to control, nonetheless the absence of management and the disgusting strategy that currently is getting more threatening in Iran will not solve the problem, but furthermore, initiate a much deeper and despicable conflict which can become an ethnical war between two races that used to be called brothers and at this very moment, I don't think the best idea is to make more enemies in the region.