Dismembered Attachment: Documents and the Embodied Continuity of Regional Wars in Iran

Abstract

For decades, Iran deployed male refugees from Afghanistan to fight against Iraq (1980–1988) and the Islamic State in Syria (2011–2024). Many of them returned disabled. Navigating their ambiguous status as refugees-turned-disabled veterans, Afghans blend discourses of sacrifice and pan-Shi'a solidarity to contest the exclusionary practices of Iran's state care bureaucracy. Based on two years of ethnographic research in Iran, this article examines how Afghans’ care negotiations forge an intimate attachment to the sovereign state. I argue that this attachment, mediated through documents, creates a sense of intimacy while evoking suspicion towards the state. In doing so, this article attends to the affective life of documents amid regional conflicts and protracted displacement, where desires for state care are woven into enduring transnational and sovereign histories of violence.