A 53-year-old Afghan refugee in Vahdat, western Tajikistan, says he has barely let his teenage sons out of the family’s apartment in months. Not since Tajik authorities appeared in the yard of his cousin’s apartment building across town, arrested his cousin and quickly deported him back to Afghanistan, the refugee recently recounted to Eurasianet.

The cousin, whom the Taliban know worked for the former republican government, has been in hiding at a relative’s house in Afghanistan since he was deported, the man said. 

This past July, Tajik authorities carried out mass deportations of Afghan refugees. The pace of deportations has since eased, but they’ve left some in the refugee community, especially newer arrivals, profoundly shaken in a country that once seemed a haven for those fleeing the Taliban.

“We were living in fear, but it’s been two months that it’s stopped, and we hope it continues like this,” the 53-year-old man, who declined to provide his name due to safety concerns, said in Dari through an interpreter.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR is aware of at least 1,288 Afghans who were deported from Tajikistan to Afghanistan this summer, including 1,152 refugees and asylum seekers, Dumitru Lipcanu, acting UNHCR representative to Central Asia, told Eurasianet in a statement earlier in November. 

Most of the deportees held valid passports and visas or government-issued refugee or asylum-seeker documentation, he said. “UNHCR urges the Government of Tajikistan to uphold its commitments to refugee protection, and ensure any returns to Afghanistan are voluntary, safe and dignified,” Lipcanu said.

The deportations affected a significant slice of the Afghan refugee community in Tajikistan, which numbers between 10,000 and 13,000 and is concentrated in the towns of Vahdat, 12 miles (20 kilometres) east of Dushanbe, and Rudaki, 10 miles south of the capital.

In a July 9 statement, the border guard service of the Committee for State Security confirmed they were deporting “foreign citizens” whom they accused of drug trafficking, possessing extremist propaganda and false documents, and violating migration laws. The border guard service did not respond to questions from Eurasianet. 

“Even though they were living in Tajikistan legally, when you break the law, it becomes illegal. Is it not so?” Tajik Interior Minister Ramazona Rakhimzoda said at an August 7 press conference where he confirmed the deportations of Afghans, the Asia-Plus newspaper reported.

The 53-year-old refugee, who arrived in Tajikistan from Pakistan with his family one-and-a-half years ago, showed Eurasianet his own documents and said his cousin also had all the proper documents. He added that his cousin was not violating any laws before he was deported, which Eurasianet could not independently confirm.

“They lost track of the count of refugees, which led to the sweeps,” a 24-year-old Afghan refugee, who also requested anonymity, told Eurasianet in Vahdat. Many deportees were among Afghans who arrived in the last one or two years and were working without permits or did not understand how to interact with Tajik authorities, according to the young refugee, who arrived shortly before Kabul fell in 2021.

There are a host of unwritten rules Afghan refugees must follow to stay in the authorities’ good graces, like keeping their beards tightly trimmed and not drinking alcohol or flirting with Tajik women, the 24-year-old refugee said. One particular hang-up for the Tajiks is the trend among younger Afghan men of cuffing their pant legs so their ankles show, he said.

However, the young refugee praised Tajik authorities as respectful, especially compared to the treatment Afghan refugees receive in Iran and Pakistan. The refugee also described life in Tajikistan as “in one word, freedom,” in contrast to the repressive Taliban regime.

Tajikistan is the only country bordering Afghanistan that “treats refugees fairly and without bias or bad intentions,” and it was the “recklessness and irresponsible behaviour of some of our compatriots” that led to the deportations, Abdul Musawir Bahadori, an Afghan migrant and head of the Ariana Organisation, which provides services to Tajikistan’s Afghan refugees, told Eurasianet in a message.

Under international and Tajik law, refugees who violate local laws must be given due process and cannot be returned to a country where their life could be under threat, UNHCR’s Lipcanu said.

“UNHCR reaffirms that the situation in Afghanistan continues to put certain groups of Afghans at risk of persecution, for whom the need for international refugee protection remains,” he said.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has long been a fierce critic of the Taliban, and, unlike the other Central Asian states, Dushanbe has yet to seriously engage with Kabul, though there have been signs of a slight thaw in the past two years. In the summer of 2021, a Tajik official said the country could potentially accept 100,000 Afghan refugees, but after allowing an initial influx of them, Dushanbe hardened its stance.

Tajikistan previously conducted а smaller, collective deportation of 41 Afghans in December 2024, according to UNHCR.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a close Rahmon ally, has opposed Afghan refugee resettlement in Central Asia since the day Kabul fell, and Moscow’s recent recognition of the Taliban government may have played a role in the deportations, the British charity Open Doors said in a statement this summer. Open Doors works with Afghan Christian refugees in Tajikistan, some of whom were deported this summer despite the significant risks they face in their homeland, the charity said.

In October, Tajikistan’s national ombudsman released a report covering the year 2024 that criticized the government’s treatment of Afghan refugees, particularly the difficulty of obtaining refugee status, residency permits and work authorisation.

This report first appeared on Eurasianet here.