RASC News Agency: A growing chorus of Afghanistani migrants in Iran is voicing grave concerns over the inhumane and degrading treatment they have suffered at the hands of staff at the Afghanistan’s Embassy in Tehran an institution now operated under the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What should be a place of refuge for a displaced and desperate people has instead become a theater of bureaucratic dysfunction and targeted humiliation. Migrants who have sought assistance with essential identity and travel documents report being subjected to verbal abuse, intimidation, and outright destruction of their papers. Several individuals describe their official documents being torn up and thrown into garbage bins by embassy staff, who reportedly refused to provide even the most basic consular services.
“We came for help, not humiliation,” said one visibly shaken man, recounting how his request for a travel permit ended with his documents in shreds and his dignity in ruins. “They didn’t even explain why. They just insulted us and threw our papers away like trash.” According to multiple eyewitnesses, on Tuesday, July 8, dozens of Afghanistani migrants queued outside the embassy to obtain “exit letters” required for legal return or resettlement. Instead of being met with professionalism or compassion, they encountered hostility and apathy, with some staff reportedly mocking and insulting those in need. In widely circulated footage on social media, chaotic scenes both inside and outside the embassy compound paint a picture of utter institutional collapse. Migrants are seen scrambling to retrieve torn-up documents from the ground, while angry protestors chant “Death to the Islamic Emirate” in defiance of the Taliban regime’s consular abuse.
“They tore up my son’s birth certificate right in front of me,” said one Afghanistani mother, her voice trembling with rage. “When I asked why, they told me to ‘go cry in the gutter.’ That’s how they treat us.” This latest scandal comes amid a wave of mass deportations of Afghanistani nationals from Iran, following Tehran’s military escalations and subsequent crackdown on undocumented foreigners. The resulting surge in demand for consular services has exposed just how woefully unprepared, corrupt, and callous the Taliban-controlled embassy has become. Reports of misconduct by Taliban-appointed diplomats and staff are not new. For months, human rights organizations and migrant advocates have warned of a pattern of abuse, including bribery, favoritism, and gender-based discrimination. Yet under Taliban rule, these issues have only deepened, with women, children, and undocumented workers bearing the brunt of the abuse.
Far from acting as representatives of a nation in crisis, Taliban officials in Tehran appear more invested in enforcing ideological loyalty than providing services. Migrants report that even basic requests such as birth registration or documentation for school enrollment are rejected unless applicants demonstrate allegiance to the Taliban’s extremist values. “They asked if I supported the Emirate before looking at my paperwork,” said one man, a former journalist. “When I said I didn’t want to answer, they told me I wasn’t worth helping.” The implications of this breakdown in diplomatic function are severe. Afghanistani refugees many of whom are fleeing persecution, conflict, and economic collapse now find themselves in legal limbo, unable to return home, unable to integrate abroad, and abandoned by the very institutions meant to protect them.
As the crisis intensifies, rights defenders are calling on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and international observers to launch an urgent investigation into the Taliban embassy’s conduct in Tehran. There are also growing calls for host countries like Iran to review their diplomatic recognition of Taliban-led missions, which critics argue are being used to export repression and surveillance rather than provide legitimate state services. “What we are witnessing is not just incompetence it is institutionalized cruelty,” said a legal advisor working with migrant families in Tehran. “These are not embassies in the traditional sense. They are ideological outposts of a regime that criminalizes the very people it claims to govern.”
As the international community continues to debate whether to engage or isolate the Taliban regime, the lived experience of Afghanistani migrants abroad paints a clear and damning picture: wherever the Taliban holds power, whether inside Afghanistan or across its diplomatic posts, the result is the same dehumanization, disorder, and the systematic dismantling of rights.
