Afghanistan Times
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KABUL — For weeks after being forced out of Iran, Mohammad Mohsen Zaryab scoured Kabul’s neighborhoods for a place to live. Instead, the 47-year-old factory worker and father of eight found a city where rents have skyrocketed, landlords refuse to negotiate, and solidarity with returning Afghans is in short supply.
“I begged landlords to lower the price,” he said. “They told me, ‘If you can’t pay, someone else will.’”
Zaryab is one of more than 2.1 million Afghans sent back from Pakistan and Iran this year alone, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Many were deported outright, others fled under threat of arrest. Almost all arrived with few belongings, expecting Kabul — home to around eight million people — to offer at least a chance at work. Instead, they ran headlong into a housing market in meltdown.
Property dealers say the influx has triggered a rent explosion, with prices in some areas doubling in the space of a year. “Since landlords noticed refugees were returning, they doubled their rents,” said real estate agent Hamed Hassani, urging the Taliban authorities to step in. “Most can’t afford what’s available.”
A modest three-room house that cost 10,000 Afghanis (about $145) a month now goes for 20,000 — a staggering sum in a country where 85% of people live on less than a dollar a day. “Demand now far outstrips supply,” said property dealer Nabiullah Quraishi. “A year ago landlords would come to us looking for tenants. Now they barely need our help.”
The Taliban-run municipality denies there is a housing crisis, even as its urban development plans — including new roads that often mean bulldozing homes — further shrink the supply of affordable housing. “Seventy-five percent of the city was built without planning,” said municipal spokesman Nematullah Barakzai. “We don’t want that to happen again.”
For the poorest, the choices are brutal. Zahra Hashimi, who returned from Iran with her family, pays rent for a single damp basement room with no electricity or running water. Her husband’s odd jobs bring in just over a dollar a day — not enough to cover rent and food. Their eldest daughter can no longer go to school under Taliban rules barring girls from secondary education, and the family can’t afford tuition for the younger ones. “We lost everything when we returned,” Hashimi said.
The crisis is squeezing even long-time Kabul residents. Tamana Hussaini, a sewing teacher in the city’s west, pays 3,000 Afghanis for a three-bedroom apartment — but her landlord wants to raise the rent. Moving is impossible. “It’s a frustrating situation where you can’t stay, but you can’t leave either,” she said.
In a country already battered by conflict, sanctions, and aid cuts, the returnee influx has turned Kabul into a case study in how fragile cities buckle under sudden population surges. For thousands of Afghan families, the capital is no longer a refuge — just another front in the fight to survive.
