Christopher Blair, Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, Princeton University
Maximum Pressure: How Refugee Repatriation Shapes Conflict
How does mass refugee return shape conflict dynamics in destination communities? In 2018, the Trump Administration imposed so-called “Maximum Pressure” sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program. Renewed sanctions devastated the Iranian economy, spurring the exodus of more than 400,000 Afghan refugees from Iran back to Afghanistan at the height of the 2018 fighting season. Leveraging historical returnee settlement patterns and the plausibly exogenous timing of the sanctions, we estimate the causal effect of large-scale refugee repatriation on violence. We draw on previously unreleased combat records from NATO to show that mass return of Afghans from Iran increased insurgent-initiated violence in returnees’ destination communities. Currency devaluation pursuant to sanctions in Iran may have reduced household income, lowering reservation wages in communities where returnees repatriated. Consistent with this hypothesis, policy-induced return had heterogeneous effects on insurgent violence, increasing use and lethality of labor-intensive combat. Falling household income also reduced the cost of government tip-buying, resulting in greater effectiveness of counterinsurgent bomb neutralization missions. While insurgent violence increased in repatriation communities, there was no effect on social conflict. Strong social capital and local institutions for dispute resolution help blunt risks of refugee return for communal violence. Our study provides causal evidence demonstrating the link between sanctions-induced refugee return and political and social conflict. These results are economically significant, highlighting unintended consequences of repatriation and clarifying the conditions under which refugee return affects conflict. Raising economic well-being and supporting social capital and legitimate, local institutions are key antecedents for safe refugee return.