Afghans in Germany protesting against Taliban violence, 14 August 2021. “Stop Killing Afghans”, Berlin Brandenburger Tor. Photo by Der Südstern via  Flickr. PUBLIC DOMAIN MARK 1.0.

Holod magazine investigated whether Afghan refugees receive asylum in Russia.  Global Voices translated the article, edited for clarity and republished with  permission. 

Journalist who fled Afghanistan after Taliban took over

On June 25, 2024, Afghan journalist Kobra Hassani, who had been trying to obtain asylum in Russia for two years, was forced to fly back to Afghanistan, which is controlled by Taliban militants.

In Afghanistan, women journalists and human rights activists face extrajudicial executions, including sexual violence. Meanwhile, Russian diplomats meet with the Taliban and invite them to the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), and Putin gladly speaks of potential cooperation with them “on the anti-terrorism track.” At the same time, the Taliban has long been recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia. Holod studied files from Russian courts regarding the granting of political asylum to Afghan citizens and discovered that the judiciary also exhibits double standards. For them, there are two Talibans: an international terrorist movement and a progressive political force that contributes to the development of the country. Holod found a detailed description of the “progressive” Taliban in an unpublished internal memo from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), which the courts use to justify asylum denials.

Under the Republican regime in Afghanistan, which was supported by the US, Hassani graduated from university in Kabul and worked in television. She was one of the most popular hosts on the youth channel Afghanistan Youth TV, which promoted secular Western values. The channel aired shows like “Young Sheldon,” had programs about tattoo parlors, shared pizza recipes, and reviewed popular social media trends. 

The last broadcasts on the channel aired in October 2021, two months after the Taliban took over Kabul. Since late 2022, the Taliban have officially banned women from attending universities, and, in practice, girls are not even allowed to attend high school.

Like many Afghans who feared the Taliban, Hassani fled Afghanistan and settled in Ukraine. When the full-scale war began, Hassani tried to leave for Poland, but the hired driver deceived her and two of her compatriots, taking them to Luhansk, from where she ended up in Russia. An attempt to illegally leave the country and head to Europe cost Hassani a year in a Russian detention center and a year in a temporary holding center for foreign nationals.

Lawyers tried to obtain political asylum for Hassani in Russia, arguing that the Taliban regime posed a threat. The court found the arguments of Hassani's defenders unconvincing, and the journalist was deported to Afghanistan.

What helps to obtain asylum

Hassani's story is not unique. Holod found dozens of cases in which Afghan citizens sought to obtain or extend temporary asylum, citing the Taliban's takeover. Statistically, only one in three applicants manages to win a court case against the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the location of the administrative claim plays an important role. For instance, in the Ivanovo region, none of 11 Afghans managed to obtain asylum, while in the Moscow region, all nine applicants successfully challenged the decisions of the migration department in court.

The research included 59 court decisions issued from August 2021 to early June 2024.  Holod found 18 positive and 41 negative decisions regarding the granting of political asylum.

To justify positive decisions, Russian courts refer to information from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as well as the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognizing the Taliban as a terrorist organization. On May 7,2024, while deciding the case of Abdul Bashir Sultani, who was conscripted into the Taliban but later fled, the Lyubertsy City Court court noted:

According to the UNHCR Representation in Russia, the civilian population of Afghanistan suffers from a security crisis, human rights violations, and a humanitarian situation in the country. 

UNHCR information also helped Esmatullah Bahtiyar, who applied for asylum in October 2021. Despite repeated attempts by the Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Saratov region to expel him from the country, Bahtiyar managed to consistently prove his right to asylum.

From the decision of the court: 

According to UNHCR, the Taliban systematically carry out attacks on civilians who were associated with the Afghan government. The main targets of attacks include civilian government employees and civilians considered to oppose Taliban values. Risks exist for individuals returning from Western countries. It is reported that they were threatened, tortured, or killed, as they were considered to have adopted values associated with these countries or to have become spies for those countries.

Inventive reasons for asylum denials 

Asylum denials are usually more inventive. Often, laudatory statements by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the Taliban, made in April 2022 and posted on the ministry's website, are used: “The new leadership is making efforts to return to peaceful life after a prolonged armed conflict and to resume the normal functioning of the national economy.”

These words became one of the main arguments in denying asylum to Mohammad Alim Islamzada, a former employee of one of the foreign companies working in Afghanistan. He fled to Russia with his wife and three minor children after his children were threatened and extorted at school. Nevertheless,  courts decided that the Taliban's efforts to “resume the normal functioning of the national economy” proved that Islamzada's children were not at risk.

In February 2024, the Ivanovo Regional Court expelled an Afghan man who had lived in Russia for 30 years with the following wording:

The fact that the Taliban Movement came to power in the Republic of Afghanistan, which is recognized as a terrorist organization, does not indicate a real threat of persecution.

Expelling Ahmad Shafi Hafizi, a former student at a Russian university, a court noted that the asylum seeker “is of no interest to the Afghan government as an individual.” The Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs particularly emphasized that “unwillingness to adhere to the traditions and customs accepted by the Afghan government after the change of power in 2021” (i.e., after the Taliban's takeover) cannot be a reason for granting asylum.

The magic memo

In the argument in Russian courts in favor of deportation, Holod also found extensive excerpts from an MFA memo on Afghanistan, presumably written in 2022. It has not been officially published, but excerpts from it are found in court rulings in the Ivanovo region and the Krasnodar Region. These excerpts, except for one case, are not cited as a reference to an MFA document: courts include them in their decisions as their own text.

Khalid Rahimi, a former employee of an Afghan military hospital in Kandahar, applied for asylum in Russia in 2022. 

The Pervomaysky Court in its decision quoted fragments of the MFA memo to confirm that Rahimi could safely return to Afghanistan:

The Taliban are taking steps to keep the economy afloat, declaring their commitment to fighting corruption, and announcing plans to reduce the bloated bureaucracy. They invite foreign investors to participate in infrastructure projects.

The Taliban authorities inherited a deplorable human rights situation from the republican regime. In the context of a 20-year armed conflict… civil liberties were systematically violated. A significant portion of the population was not provided with quality drinking water, food, or access to medical services.

At the same time, after the Taliban came to power, the armed conflict practically ceased, and the frequency of terrorist attacks significantly decreased. In the first month of Taliban rule, the number of casualties from military actions decreased by at least five times compared to the last years of the republican regime.

However, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Afghanistan under the Taliban is experiencing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. More than 17 million Afghans lack sufficient food and drinking water and do not have access to basic hygiene. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan notes that in 2024, the Taliban regime practices the death penalty, including stoning, and corporal punishment.

According to the NGO USA for the UNHCR, 1.6 million people left Afghanistan after the fall of the Republican regime in August 2021.