Uzbekistan on the Frontlines of Afghanistan’s Chaos

Less than 50 miles north of Mazar-i-Sharif is the only link across the Afghan-Uzbek border, a bridge from the Afghan town of Hairatan to the Uzbek city of Termez. The Afghanistan-Uzbekistan Friendship Bridge crosses the Amu Darya, a river that flows along the entirely of Uzbekistan’s 89-mile border with Afghanistan. Save for the bridge across, the short border has long been marked by landmines, barbed wire, and electrified fencing.

Few were crossing the Friendship Bridges in August as Uzbekistan struggled with how to respond to the dynamic political and humanitarian crisis to the south. In some ways, Uzbekistan’s greater openness since 2016 under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has been on clear display; in other ways, however, Tashkent is falling back to familiar, skeptical and unwelcoming, positions.

The rapid Taliban takeover of Afghanistan entered a new phase with the flight of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on August 15 as the Taliban arrived in Kabul. Initial reports claimed Ghani had flown to Tajikistan, with some rumors that he’d fled to Uzbekistan. He eventually surfaced in the United Arab Emirates on August 18.

Ghani wasn’t alone in fleeing. A day before Ghani’s escape, on August 14, Abdul Rashid Dostum and a group of followers, including the governor of Balkh Province Ata Mohammad Noor, reportedly crossed into Uzbekistan. Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek warlord, an Afghan army commander, and once a vice president, is said to have long maintained a home in Termez.

The Uzbek government said on August 17 that “the alleged presence” of Dostum and other fleeing Afghan officials, was “according to official information, not true.”

That wasn’t the only refutation Uzbek officials made in mid-August.

Following the crash of an Afghan air force plane in Uzbekistan on August 15 and initial statements made by Uzbek authorities that 22 Afghan military aircraft and 24 helicopters had crossed the border into Uzbekistan carrying a total of 585 Afghan servicemembers between August 14 and 15, Uzbek authorities denied their own reports. Authorities also retracted an August 16 statement that 158 Afghan civilians and soldiers had been detained illegally crossing the river.

The retractions are flimsy, to say the least. Satellite images from August 16 indicate the sudden appearance of at least 22 small fixed-wing aircraft and 26 helicopters on the tarmac at Termez’s airport.

Reporting for the Associated Press in Termez, Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska wrote that on August 17:

A drive past the Termez Airport showed locals stopping along the road to look at numerous helicopters that were not there the day before — even though it’s impossible to tell from the distance whether they were Uzbek or Afghan military aircraft.

The Uzbek government’s retractions were followed by the Foreign Ministry warning that attempts to illegally cross the border would be “harshly suppressed.” The Uzbek Foreign Ministry, which has hosted several Taliban delegations, also said it was contact with the Taliban regarding border issues.

In the United States on August 16, Caroline Tabler, the communications director for Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, told The Associated Press that their office was working with an intermediary who was in touch with the Afghan pilots who fled, with their aircraft, to Uzbekistan. “We know Uzbekistan has taken their cellphones. Our primary concern is making sure Uzbekistan does not turn them over to the Taliban.”

While denial blankets Termez, in Tashkent Uzbek authorities were taking credit for staging German evacuation flights from Afghanistan.

On August 18, Mirziyoyev held a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in which coordination on humanitarian evacuations from Afghanistan was a top issue. German military planes are ferrying passengers, German citizens and Afghans, from Kabul to Tashkent (and also to Qatar) and Lufthansa planes chartered by the German government are taking passengers onward to Germany.

The press service of Uzbekistan Airways reported on August 18 that Terminal 3 at Tashkent’s international airport, which usually handles domestic flights, would be closed. The airline’s statements cited “technical reasons,” but Mirziyoyev’s call with Merkel clarified that the terminal was being used to process European and Afghan citizens being evacuated from Afghanistan.

The very first German military flight arrived at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport with soldiers to help secure the airport on August 16. It left Kabul with just seven passengers, underscoring the chaos surrounding the airport. A second flight on August 17 had 125 passengers.

Uzbek authorities have made it clear that none of the passengers will be staying in Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan is the only Central Asian state never to have signed on to the United Nations’s 1951 Refugee Convention or the subsequent 1967 protocol, which together form the bedrock of international consensus on the definition of a “refugee” and their rights. The core principle of both is the concept of non-refoulement, or not forcibly returning an individual to a country where they face serious threats.

Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry said on August 20 that 150 Afghans had been returned to Afghanistan, at their own request, in agreement with the Taliban. The next day, Russian media reported that Uzbekistan had accepted around 400 refugees from Afghanistan and set them up in temporary accommodations near the border.

In the coming weeks, as the rush of foreigners out of Afghanistan slows and the Taliban settle into power, Uzbekistan will remain on the frontline. Its generosity to fleeing Europeans (and their Afghan colleagues) may be matched by a cold shoulder given to Afghans trying to escape on their own. In late August Russia fearmongered, warning of militants among the refugees in a effort to dissuade Central Asian countries from cooperating with U.S. evacuation efforts. With China, Russia, Turkey, and other countries showing an inclination to recognize, or the very least at least work with, a Taliban government, Uzbekistan may follow suit – a break from its strident anti-Taliban stance in the 1990s.

The Friendship Bridge in Termez was formally opened on May 12, 1986, replacing a temporary pontoon bridge that had been erected to ensure supply of the Soviet Army after its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The bridge was the setting for the final scenes of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, with the the last column of Soviet troops calmly driving their tanks across on February 15, 1989.