Afghanistan is the country with the greatest number of exiles and migrants, both inside Afghanistan itself and outside the country. The bordering states of Iran and Pakistan, in their turn, have, over the course of some 25 years, taken in the largest number of refugees anywhere in the world,. At the beginning of 2002, 2.35 million Afghan refugees lived officially in neighbouring Iran. The entire EU takes in fewer refugees from all over the world than the Islamic republic from Afghanistan alone. Now, admittedly, Pakistan and Iran are deporting Afghans on a massive scale. And some German states also want to send these refugees back to a country where even the deployment of the Bundeswehr is seen as dangerous.

A nice place

Michael Winterbottom’s movie »In this World« is the last, for the time being, of a series of movies and documentaries focusing on Afghan refugees. The film, which received the Golden Bear at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival, is about the flight of two Afghan teenagers against a real background. Jamal and Enayat live in the Pakistani camp Shamshatoo near the city of Peshawar. They want to go to London. Quetta, the city they stop off in on the way, turns out to be a town with over a million inhabitants. The next morning, snow is lying on the mountains: »a nice place«. Their journey takes them through Tehran into the mountains of Kurdistan, then on through Turkey to the French camp of Sangatte. In Godard style, scriptwriter Tony Grisoni has only provided basic outlines for improvisations. In contrast to the documentary movie »La Promesse« by the Dardenne brothers, foreground (acting) and background (setting) remain clearly separate.

This exceptional film follows the protagonists from the point of view of an autonomy of migration, shows them roaming through the new world as reverse rucksack tourists, delineates routes between the »fixers«1, depicts the changes of transport and stop-offs, how they pass their time playing football or having snowball fights, how they encounter harrassment and solidarity, in a Kurdish village in northern Iran, for example. Nonetheless, only a few make it. Jamal announces his arrival by telephone: »Yes, I’ve got to London.« And Enayat? »He is not in this world.« Pictures of a mud-brick village with a pump well, a girl in a black sequined dress. Then Jamal at the flea market, London’s bazaar. He goes into a mosque, talks to himself in a whisper, close up to the microphone – prayer, trauma, grieving?

1979 ff.

The Afghan director and engineer Latif Ahmadi made two films early on that follow the flights of two families from different social milieus. In »Farar« (The Escape, 1983), the Western-oriented Homeira listens to the German disco band Supermax.2 Kabul appears as a lively metropolis. Like in a Bollywood film – Indian films were and are very popular in Afghanistan -, she stands with her lover on a raft. Shortly after her return from summer holidays, the Soviet army marches into Kabul; documentary footage from 1979 is combined with fictional movie sequences. Here, the film also falls apart in an aesthetic regard, as if the film rolls had been muddled up. The family decides to flee, disguised as peasants, through the mountains on foot via Pakistan to North America. In »Pardehaje Mohajer« (Immigrant Birds, 1985), the bridegroom is killed in revenge during a wedding ceremony. The family of the bride emigrates to Pakistan to escape the disgrace. Here, too, the film follows their arduous journey through the mountains that a large part of the Afghan population already knows well or soon will know. In the refugee camp, the young woman comes across her husband’s murderer. In between, the Mujaheddin can be seen training. Both films fuse together influences from Soviet, Iranian and Indian films with an electronic soundtrack, landscape shots, social realism, and heartbreaking scenes.

Tehran as a building site

Since the Islamic revolution of 1979, two million Iranians have gone into exile; at the same time, millions of Afghans have found refuge in neighbouring countries. In their films, Iranian filmmakers like Majid Majidi, Ali Mohammad Ghasemi and Azita Damandan reflect the life of Afghan refugees in Tehran and the refugee camps. They show how people caught between two fronts have to wait on the bare earth of the desert, but don’t put up with it without complaint. Or how they manage to struggle along as construction workers – despite raids, stolen wages and living in the shells of buildings.

Azita Damandan’s short movie »Hamsaya« (Neighbour, 1999) begins in the hut of a construction worker. The »establishing shot« pans over collages of footballers on the wall. Neighbours are talking about university life, while the worker eats a piece of flatbread. Another neighbour carries his scooter over the ditch at the side of the road with some difficulty. While washing a pan in a dirty drain hole in the floor, the worker sings »With an Afghani accent: you broke my heart«. A steel reinforcement rod juts into the picture. The worker tidies his hair in imitation of the models on the torn-out clippings on the wall. In the evening, he goes to the pub with other Afghan football fans to watch the qualifying match of the Iranian team for the football World Cup in France in 1998. Later, sitting on the bed, he eats from the pan and crosses the day out in his calendar. His radio is too weak, so he listens to the football game on the street: »Ali Daie gives pass.« His neighbour, returning home, looks sceptical. The worker is building a bridge over the ditch in front of the lighted and curtained window. When the Iranian team beats the USA, he dances across the street, bangs on his metal bowl and calls »Iran, Iran«. In the morning, the neighbours are surprised at the new bridge: »Sir … brother … master!«, they call to him from in front of the hut; but he sleeps on, all smeared with cement. This film, redolent of Fassbinder’s early works, was completed under great difficulties, one being that the cutter kept hold of the material. Now Azita Damandan is editor of a health magazine issued by the Red Crescent. She intends to make another film soon, as her employer can give her time off to do so.

Afghan Town

In 1999, a group of Afghan students at the film school in Tehran put together a twenty-part documentary on the refugee population in the Tehran area, parts of which were also broadcast on television. This is unusual enough, because Afghans are normally not allowed to film here. Now, these documentary filmmakers work as the Kabul Film Collective in the Afghan capital. Part One, »Madar vatan« (Mother of the Homeland) by Razi Mohebi, is about Fatimah from Shi’ite-dominated Bamiyan. She is shown in a brick factory. She bears the name of her mother, as women are defined through their relationship to child or husband. »We have destroyed Afghanistan. Who were the Taliban? They come from our people, where else?« She calls for women to be able to participate in political decisions. Part Two, »Nan awarane kudjak« (The Little Breadwinners) by Abdolmalek, is about boys who collect cartons on the streets of Tehran. They compete for the raw materials with the rubbish collectors. Another boy polishes shoes. When asked if he knows Afghanistan, a refugee child answers: »No«. Part Five, »Afghan Abad« (Afghan Town) by Mir Hosseini Nuri, gives a view of how a refugee village comes into being on its own. We’ve been in Iran for twenty years, says one woman, having fled from the Russians. »But what is there now?« The films have been shot using a basic video camera; they mostly provide detailed studies.

Disownments

The movie »Baran« (2001) by the Iranian director and former actor Majid Majidi shows a construction site in the rich northern part of Tehran. When the government inspectors turn up, the group of workers rapidly splits up. While some continue working stoically, the other half runs to hide. The site manager disowns his workers. The raid is soon over – one has the feeling that there is tacit consent. The multi-storied house is being built around a courtyard. Burning oil drums instead of heaters, piles of cement bags, up and down the steps. There is not a single machine here, no crane, no cement mixer. Blankets are hanging in the doorways, plastic sheets keep out the wind instead of glass panes. The walls are still unplastered, but the house is full of life around the stoves and beds. The sound of nocturnal parties, dancing and music emanates from this construction-site home. For, except for the Afghans – »they go to the city in twilight, and return home in twilight« – all the construction workers live here, divided up into their social ethnic groups, while they work on building the house. This is normal in Tehran: at the beginning, a hastily built brick hut stands at the edge of the building site; later, the workers live in the shell until it is ready to be moved into and a new construction site is waiting.3

The drama of »Baran« begins when a body is transported from the site on a truck. »Take him to the hospital, but don’t mention this place.« No one has a contract, but the Afghans without papers are, like the illegalised workers on Berlin construction sites, particular targets of racism, wage swindles and exploitation. »Iranian workers are more important than Afghan ones«, is what they say when paying the daily wages. »They come all the way from Kann Sulerun every day«, says the site manager, who swears in Turkish, »and they work more than Iranians for less money.« Later, an old man waiting for work at the side of the road is shown climbing aboard an employer’s pickup. In place of Najaf, the man who has fallen, his child is to work. When the errand boy, Lateef, is told to make way for the slightly-built Rahmat, he is indignant: »I’m warning you, Afghan, first you take away my job, and then I’ll smack your nose into your brain.« Rahmat is really called Baran and is actually a girl disguised with a cap, a scarf and silence. »Can’t he speak for himself?«, everyone says. »I« is not permitted for women in particular. »He« is now to make tea, cook, wash up, go shopping – classical women’s jobs, in other words. »He« tidies up, sets a long table, puts some greenery in a vase. The food tastes better too. During the next raid, Lateef creates a disturbance, diverting the police so that Baran can escape – since he has realised »he« is a girl, he loves her. He is taken into temporary police custody, and all the Afghans are sacked. Baran now collects tree trunks and rocks from the icy river near the Afghan village just outside Tehran. Lateef listens in on a conversation: »As you know, the city of Bamiyan has fallen4 [...] These are the things we found on your brother, and a letter he wrote shortly before he died in battle.« Lateef sells his passport at the bazaar, making himself »sans papier« like the Afghans. He brings the money to Najar, who is to return to Bamiyan the same night. Baran has already put on the chador, then she wraps the scarf across her face and sits down on the loading platform with her siblings and the goat.

»Do you think that migration is treated differently in Western and non-Western societies? -Without any doubt there exist differences between the approaches to migration. Western countries have a strict quota for immigrants and a stricter quota for refugees.[…] Emigrants who are uneducated and fleeing poverty are bluntly rejected, as we saw recently in Australia. In the West, economic and cultural criteria take precedence over humane considerations. In Iran, the prospect is completely different. […] If illegal refugees are included, the figure is around four million. Despite the economic crisis prevailing in Iran, they were provided with secure shelter, food, schooling and a chance to survive. Zahra Bahrami, »Baran«, came to Iran with her family when she was 3 years old. […]. They lived in the refugee camp of Torbat e Jan, where Zahra went to school, got an education similar to Iranian children, and is soon ready to join the university.« (From an interview with the director Majid Majidi for the official website of the Greek EU presidency)

Majid Majidi’s report-like documentary »Barefoot to Herat« was shot in November 2001 in the refugee camp Makaki (Slaughterhouse)5 and in the camp »Mile 46« supervised by the Northern Alliance. People running from the US bomb attacks in Kandahar, Herat and elsewhere ran up against the closed borders. »Here, there is nothing but cold«, says one woman. »We have been without a home for 26 years.« For latecomers, there is nothing left but holes in the ground within sight of the camp that won’t let them in. The children beg for bread there. Explosions and jets roar off screen. The »Camp of Mile 46« offers Red Crescent tents, under which the gravel has to be shifted away. Cartons and used paper are distributed, hundreds of children sit out in the open in front of a blackboard made of a propped up cardboard carton. A child draws on the canvas of the white tents. Men fighting the Taliban race up on Toyota pickups, armed with machineguns and mortars. A second journey in February 2002 took Majidi back to Makaki, where there is famine. In Herat, victory is being celebrated. »It is my country. I must serve it«, says a very young student in suit and tie, returned from Iran. In the Maslakh Camp, an elderly woman comes up to the director, who is seen in the film for the first time: »Give us oil, rice, wheat. Or kill us all; that way you’ll have peace of mind.« Children collect cartridge cases out in the countryside and whistle on them. »I am surprised at the indifference of the world«, says an elderly man, very calmly. »If we don’t received any bread or clothes, we’ll go somewhere else – Pakistan, Iran, Russia – and leave Maslakh for ever.«

Protest

The migrants fight their way through conflict zones and camp regulations. Naser Bakideh’s film »Zangoo« (Cradle) makes the protest evident at the very beginning. The misery in the Makaki Camp is the background of the uprising. A very agitated man, who has been in the camp since the bombing began, hurries through the camp; the cuts in the film are just as rapid. He has lost a leg, he says; some women had to sleep outside for six days, no bread, no water: »We were frozen.« Children have small cars that they push through the dust with a stick, or they play football. In the tent school, they are taught the alphabet by the light of a petroleum lamp.

In his two interrelated documentaries »The Almighty« and »The Joy of Fire«, Ali Mohammad Ghasemi, who for »Zangoo« was still a cutter, listened and watched with more staying power and carefully selected images. In the winter of 2002, in the misty desert in the west of Afganistan, families have formed groups around fields of cloths. »On the radio they said: Go to the Mile 46 region, where they have set up a camp.« They sit around the fire and speak with low voices: »When we arrived, they told us there was no room. We can’t do anything for you.« Greenly shimmering tent landscape under floodlights, then close-ups of the embers and burning branches. »We are tired of the war. Any sort of education is out of our reach. Afghanistan wouldn’t be like this if we were educated.« God is their hope. But hasn’t God forgotten them, the interviewer asks, whose film has to begin with »In the name of God« to accord with Iranian regulations. The fire doesn’t burn until morning, but until they wake up again. »We have torn blankets.«

»The Joy of Fire« takes up the image of a family around a campfire again. In an absolutely barren region, a handful of teenagers is walking towards the horizon. The hand-held camera follows them as they tear down branches, breaking, cracking, bundling, cut, cut. Then they walk back, dragging and hauling huge bundles. As already in »The Almighty«, a slowed-down sequence is inserted into the film showing past armed break-ins into houses. In a long shot, the tracks they leave behind them can be seen; one boy breaks rank, prays, and comes back to join the others. They enter the camp with their bundles. »People in Afghanistan – otherwise – to achieve democracy – members of various parties« are the scraps of talk heard from the world receiver.

»Repatriation«

»Before September 11, 2001, and before the US-allied attack on Afghanistan, the refugee situation in the region escalated dramatically. […] Around 300,000 refugees accumulated at the Iranian border alone […]. The closing of the borders and deportation camps are directly connected with the internationalisation of the Afghan refugee crisis. The closing-off was accompanied by a domestic policy on aliens that had scarcely existed up to now.« (Helmut Dietrich)6

Institutions like UNHCR and IOM are involved in »repatriation programmes« that are meant to make it easier for Afghan refugees to travel back to Afghanistan. Those returning receive 20 dollars, 150 kilos of wheat, a bucket, two woollen blankets and a plastic tarp. In June 2002, the UNHCR celebrated the return of the millionth refugee in the »reception centre« Pol-e-Khaki before the gates of Kabul. Nine out of ten of those returning came from Pakistan; 55 percent prefer to remain in Kabul. But the city is becoming too small for the over 500,000 additional people; the rents even for simple mud buildings are spiralling to unaffordable heights. The refugee organisation calls the return to Afghanistan »the biggest action of its kind for three decades«. The longer the refugees remain in Iran, Pakistan or Europe, however, the more necessary it becomes for them to be at least given a right of residence.

»On August 9, 2002, Jamal Udin Torabi’s application for asylum was rejected. He was, however, allowed to enter the country by special permission, and now lives in London. He has to leave the country one day before his 18th birthday.« (Closing credits from »In this World«)

Michael Winterbottom, IN THIS WORLD, Great Britain 2002, 89 min.
Latif Ahmadi, THE ESCAPE (Farar), Afghanistan 1983, 90 min.
Latif Ahmadi, IMMIGRANT BIRDS (Pardehaje Mohajer), Afghanistan 1985, 110 min.
Azita Damandam, NEIGHBOUR (Hamsayaa), Iran 1999, 24 min.
Razi Mohebi, MOTHER OF THE HOMELAND (Madar vatan), Iran 1999, 23 min.
Abdolmalek Schafili, THE LITTLE BREADWINNERS (Nan awarane kudjak), Iran 1999, 24 min.
Mir Hosseini Nuri, AFGHAN TOWN (Afghan Abad), Iran 1999, 20 min.
Majid Majidi, BARAN, Iran 2001, 92 min.
Majid Majidi, BAREFOOT TO HERAT, Iran 2002, 65 min.
Nasser Bakideh, CRADLE (Zangoo), Iran 2002, 15 min.
Ali Mohammad Ghasemi, THE ALMIGHTY (Khaleghe Jabar), Iran 2003, 13 min.
Ali Mohammad Ghasemi, THE JOY OF FIRE (Lezate Atash), Iran 2003, 14 min.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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