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The ‘Economic Storm’ of Crises That Is Battering Afghanistan

Africa|An ‘Economic Storm’ of Crises Is Battering Afghanistan

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/world/africa/afghanistan-economy-deportation.html

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Ghullam Ali Hussaini used to make $6 a day as an Afghan construction worker in southern Iran, enough to rent a small house and provide for his mother and sick brother who lived with him.

But the job, the house and the certainty of three meals a day are all gone.

Mr. Hussaini and his family were deported back to Afghanistan last month, among the two million Afghans who have been expelled from neighboring countries and whose return is pushing Afghanistan’s teetering economy to the brink.

“I’m not at peace because I couldn’t find a house for myself,” Mr. Hussaini said as he sipped on green tea at a relative’s home, where his family had taken temporary refuge after a nearly 1,500 mile journey from Iran.

Four years into Taliban rule, Afghanistan is being hit head-on by two major crises, sending the people of one of the world’s poorest countries further into a seemingly endless cycle of misery, hunger and displacements.

The first crisis is the mass return of Afghans, most of whom had been living in Iran or Pakistan. A tidal wave of xenophobia and political pressure in those countries has led to a campaign of deportations and forced returns. Millions of Afghan nationals are returning without jobs — many do not have homes, either — to a country where more than half of its 42 million people are already in need of humanitarian assistance.