Termez: The takeover of the Afghanistan Taliban has brought back bad memories to neighbors of the former Soviet country, who feared the threat of jihadists and the crisis of refugees.
While Islamic guerrillas never ran into areas outside Afghanistan, their reign for two decades ago still forged uncertainty in Central Asia which was close together.
Now the regional government controls themselves with instability to spill to their territory once more while locals prepare new neighbors at home.
“If the refugees come, we will give them our house and salt and bread,” said Abdualziz Mukhamadjanov, a 26-year-old businessman in the city of Termez in South Uzbekistan near the Afghan border.
“What else can you do?” The sentiment was not distributed by Russia, the old force in the region, which urged Central Asia to refuse Western demand to protect Afghanistan.
Refugees still arrived in Uzbekistan, although the government said that it only allowed them to pass.
On August 20, it said it had helped the western evacuation from nearly 2,000 people – most European citizens worked in the country and some Afghans – through the capital of the capital Tashkent.
He also said that he had returned 150 Afghans after talks with the Taliban to ensure their security.
However, reports have circulated a large number of refugees crossing to Uzbekistan on the Amu Darya river using an emergency raft, and a staff of the Afghan embassy told AFP that the coronavirus center in Termezes accommodated up to 1,500 people.
Tashkent has lied about the situation.
Mukhamadjanov and many Termez residents near the Afghan border stated surprise in the reports of asylum seekers who had crossed, while AFP was prohibited from accessing well to the center of Coronavirus and a camp near the border.
When the Taliban first ruled from 1996 to 2001, the Islamic Movement of the Uzbekistan (IMU) was formed by Uzbeks, found houses in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.
The militants surprised the area in 1999 with brave attacks to Kyrgyzstan, briefly occupying a village.
Uzbekistan blamed the group for bombings in Tashkent earlier that year.
IMU is believed to have far reduced strength, but the remnants and other militant groups in Afghanistan with Central Asia among their ranks can still pose a threat, said Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili from the University of Pittsburgh.
“The Taliban has never moved in Central Asia, but has Central Asian fighters that they can use as leverage with Central Asian countries,” Murtazashvili told AFP.
Moscow, who has increased military training in Central Asia, said countries bordering Afghanistan had triggered weapons.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned this month that guerrillas can enter the territory “with the guise of refugees”.
Of the three ex-Soviet countries bordering Afghanistan – Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – only Tajikistan, where Moscow has a base, has refused to hold official talks with the Taliban.
Emomali Rakhmon’s leader complained this month from the buildup of “terrorist groups” on the side of the Afghanistan border which was more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles).
The country also denied reports that he sent a military supply to a group dominated by ethnic Tajik which increased against the Taliban in Afghan remote Panjshir valley.
But the poor republic has its own reasons for fearing Islamism after coming through a five-year civil war in the 1990s who saw the Islamic coalition and regional forces were defeated by the government.
“For Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, economic considerations can take precedence, requiring a stronger relationship with the Taliban,” Mullojanov Parviz Mullojanov, a researcher of a visit in the Advanced Study School in Social Sciences (EHESS).
“For Tajikistan, security will be the most important.” Both Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have suggested they are ready to take refugees, while noting that Koronivirus causes complications.
Meanwhile Kyrgyzstan and Kyrgyzstan have released a statement that they have not agreed to receive refugees in offers to reduce rumors of social media.