Iran built a wall with Afghanistan to stop “illegal” immigrants.
Iran’s military has built a more than 10-kilometre-long wall on its border with Afghanistan, aiming to stem illegal migration flows from the Central Asian country. “More than 10 kilometres of the wall has been built on the border and we are ready to build another 50 kilometres,” the Iranian Students’ News Agency quoted Brigadier General Nozar Nemati, deputy commander of the army’s ground forces, as saying. Iran shares a more than 900-kilometre-long border with Afghanistan, and the Islamic Republic is home to one of the world’s largest refugee populations. The flow of Afghan migrants has surged since the Taliban seized power in August 2021 after US troops withdrew. Tehran has not given official figures, but MP Abolfazl Torabi has generally estimated their number at “between six and seven million”. Iranian authorities have recently intensified their crackdown on “illegal” flows, regularly announcing the expulsion of migrants. “By closing the borders, we want to control the country’s entrances and exits” and “improve the security of border areas,” Nemati said, while Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni has said in recent weeks that Iran will use barbed wire. Water-filled trenches, in addition to the wall, to make the border more secure. Furthermore, on September 13, the spokesman for the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Ebrahim Rezaei, stated that the authorities plan to “expel more than two million illegal citizens in the near future.”
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