Afghanistan: Russia fuels fear of refugees

While Russia portrays refugees from Afghanistan as potential terrorists, the Taliban sees it as a factor of stability. This could also prove problematic for Russia itself.

A girl who skips after her parents – the picture by Reuters photographer Johanna Geron of a family from Afghanistan who arrived at the Melsbrouk military airport in Belgium on August 25 quickly spread on social media.

It didn’t take long for the Russian state broadcaster RT to publish a tweet with a version modified by Photoshop: a grenade launcher, a load of dynamite and two machine guns protruded from the parents’ backpacks. While a vertical lettering at the top right indicated the change via Photoshop, one question in the tweet was: “Are some terrorists getting a free flight from Afghanistan?”

On August 27, RT responded with a new tweet to outrage over the crude forgery portraying refugees as terrorists: “That was intended as sarcasm, but the result was both misleading and tasteless.” Shortly afterwards, the original tweet disappeared, but it can still be found in the internet archive.

Stir up fears

Russian reports on Georgia show that this is not an isolated case. Its foreign minister, David Zalkaliani, accused Russian news agencies of spreading disinformation that the government in Tbilisi is sheltering Afghan refugees and that Georgia has become a refuge for people from Afghanistan. Zalkaliani made it clear that employees of international organizations and their families would only be flown out to Tbilisi on a temporary basis and then taken to other European countries and the USA.

Internationally, Georgia has received much praise for providing its military airport near Tbilisi as a hub and temporary accommodation. But the Orthodox Church of Georgia and right-wing extremist politicians in particular, often with ties to Russia, are fueling existing fears of Muslims.

How easy it is to stir up insecurity among people who have experienced war and displacement in their country over the past three decades is shown by the reaction to a vague proposal by Austria’s Foreign Minister at the time, Sebastian Kurz, in 2017, which was distributed in Georgia via the Russian media found. At the time, he suggested refugee camps outside the EU and named Georgia as a possible location.

Compare with 2015

In Germany, too, the pictures of the people at Kabul airport sparked debates about a possible new wave of refugees to Europe. Several politicians from the Union, such as Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet, warned of a situation like the one with the refugees from Syria in 2015.

AfD top candidate and parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel called for the right to asylum to be suspended. Your party circulated a statement by the patriotic parties in the European Parliament calling for the borders to be closed.

The current situation in Afghanistan is different from 2015 in Syria. Even leaving Afghanistan via the border crossings controlled by the Taliban is difficult. The neighboring states in the north hardly allow refugees in. According to media reports, Uzbekistan has also turned away people with permanent visas from the border in recent weeks.

Uzbekistan does not even recognize the Geneva Refugee Convention. Turkmenistan is more closed than North Korea, and Russian troops patrol the Tajikistani border. Even temporary accommodation of people from Afghanistan in the Central Asian states, as the federal government and the USA are striving for, will be difficult to implement.

Taliban as a stability factor

The Central Asian states are encouraged in their cautious to negative stance by Russia. President Vladimir Putin reprimanded him against temporary detention. This could endanger Russia’s security, he said at a meeting of the ruling United Russia party on Sunday. There is no visa requirement between the Central Asian states and Russia. Extremists could pose as supposed refugees and enter Russia. A situation like the one in the 1990s and 2000s, when there was fighting in the North Caucasus, must not be repeated.

While the Russian leadership and the media it controls describe refugees as potential extremists, they also try to portray the Taliban as a factor of stability. However, like in other countries, the Taliban in Russia is classified as a terrorist organization. Russian media have to mention this in every communication, including in their short tweets. This can create contradicting impressions for the audience when the media reported that the Taliban terrorist organization was reliably guarding the Russian embassy in Kabul and that the staff did not have to be flown out.

The narrative is served, according to which the Taliban have driven out the international coalition led by the USA and are now ensuring calm. It is questionable, however, whether the Taliban, for example, will stop drug trafficking, which they use to finance themselves, in the direction of Central Asia. It is also possible that other Islamist terrorist organizations will gain strength because the Taliban allow it or they cannot fight them. And ultimately the Taliban could prove to be incapable and thus further increase the pressure for emigration – scenarios that are not in Russia’s interest and that can be combated with international cooperation rather than international fears.