Tajikistan ‘rounding up and deporting Afghan refugees’

A Tajik soldier watches the border area across the Panj River in the Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip of land separating Afghanistan from its neighbours. Photograph: Pascal Mannaerts/Alamy

The Tajikistan authorities are rounding up Afghan refugees and forcing them to cross the border back into Afghanistan, despite some having been granted asylum in other countries.

According to reports from Tajikistan’s 10,000-strong Afghan refugee community, people are being picked up off the street and houses raided in a spate of recent round-ups of Afghan families, who have been sheltering in the country since the Taliban seized power in August 2021.