94% of refugees in Iran are Afghan nationals

TEHRAN, Dec.17 (MNA)--Iran has been hosting millions of Afghan refugees since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees also flooded into Iran after the 1991 Persian Gulf War when the Saddam army launched bloody attacks against Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north. It was at that time that Iran hosted about 5 million refugees, an unprecedented record in the modern history. Later, most Iraqis left Iran; however Afghans continued to stay after more than three decades. Now there are varying figures about the number of refugees in Iran. The UNHCR office in Tehran put the number of legally registered refugees in Iran at about 900,000. BAFIA (Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrants' Affairs) says the number changes constantly as some Afghan refugees leave Iran and some others enter the country. Currently, more than 94 percent of refugees in Iran are Afghan nationals. There is no figure about undocumented Afghan refugees in Iran. BAFIA says there are 92 countries in the world that population of each of them is less than the number of refugees in Iran.