Ahmad Moradi

For decades, the Iranian state has sent Hazara Afghan male refugees to fight in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) and the war against the Islamic State in Syria (2011 onward), from which many have returned disabled. This research aims to explore the social life of these two generations of Afghan veterans in contemporary Iran, their exclusion from care and compensation, and their ambiguous status as refugees who fought for their host country. Drawing on the anthropology of care, kinship, and disability studies, I situate the disability of Afghans within local and familial relations, where acts of care and injury are intertwined in a historical continuum of violence and destitution. This project contributes to the scholarly debate on the social life of wounds and wounding processes, wherein the rough and dynamic relations of care between wounded individuals, their families, and variously afflicted communities shape everyday survival at the margins of the state across war-torn societies in the Middle East and Central Asia. Additionally, by focusing on the non-humanitarian care negotiations of refugees, and by looking at the intimate and embodied experiences of transnational armed violence, this research contributes to the literature on veteranhood and the anthropology of care.