Even before Kabul fell to the Taliban a year ago, a large Afghan community had taken up residence in Vahdat Township in Tajikistan. Eurasianet says Tajik regulations were more relaxed back when they arrived in the late 2010s, when the Western-backed government was still in power.
After the Taliban takeover, Dushanbe initially said it would receive up to 100,000 Afghan refugees.
But jobs are scarce in Tajikistan. Roughly half of working-age men leave to labor abroad. The economy is always poor, but new economic downturns – from COVID, from Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine – have further raised prices for staple goods.
This may explain why the government has not fulfilled its promise.
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says that there were just over 8,500 Afghan refugees and asylum seekers in Tajikistan by this summer. Of those, 5,700 reportedly arrived after the Taliban took over last August – a little over 5 percent of what Dushanbe committed to taking.
Even so, Tajikistan remains the only country in Central Asia to accept Afghans.
According to Eurasianet, the rules are strict: refugees are not allowed to reside in major cities such as Dushanbe and Khujand. But they are eligible to receive healthcare, to work, and to send their children to school.
However, getting those rights is not easy. Afghans must first navigate the Tajik bureaucracy to receive refugee status. Eurasianet says several who spoke on condition of anonymity said they had been asked for hefty bribes by Interior Ministry officials responsible for issuing documents – the asking prices ranged between US$1,000 and US$3,000.
The UNHCR acknowledges it has heard of such shakedowns. While recognizing that “many asylum-seekers and refugees across the world are fearful of reporting incidents of corruption due to perceived ramifications that it might have on their status,” the aid agency told Eurasianet it “urges” refugees to report corruption to Tajik government hotlines.
Afghans whom Eurasianet met seemed uneasy approaching the authorities. Tajikistan is routinely ranked by governance watchdogs as one of the most corrupt countries in the world: 150 of 180 by Transparency International last year.
Eurasianet notes that it is difficult, maybe impossible, to find an Afghan in Vahdat who wishes to stay. But to be accepted in a third country – somewhere in the West – a refugee needs a sponsor.
One Afghan who has been in Vahdat for several years wonders if he would have found a sponsor had he stayed until the Taliban took control. By then he was already in Tajikistan. He feels like he missed his chance, according to Eurasianet.
“As a refugee you start from scratch again. In Afghanistan I was well-known. Here I have to start over,” the man told Eurasianet, asking not to be identified, fearing that any perceived complaint could hurt his status in Tajikistan.
According to Eurasianet, several Afghans running shops at the local bazaar sell items from their homeland, such as saffron from Herat. One of the customers is 23-year-old Sabayi, who has been in Vahdat for three years.
“I had a hard time integrating, because there was nothing to do,” she told Eurasianet. But that reportedly changed after she formed a soccer team with other Afghan women. She plays defense and hopes to immigrate to Canada.
