Afghan Uyghurs whose families fled China now fear the Taliban could deport them

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A Wakhi man looks out at the mountains in the Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan. Uyghurs leaving China have trekked through the region. Now many Uyghurs in Afghanistan fear the Taliban could deport them to China.

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Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (right) meets with senior Afghan Taliban official Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Tianjin, northeastern China, on July 28.

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Naseri’s parents fled the Xinjiang town of Yarkand and crossed into Afghanistan with a caravan of several dozen other families in 1976. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan three years later, his parents moved to Pakistan. Naseri himself has relocated to Istanbul, Turkey.

Naseri has made a list of about 500 Uyghurs who want to leave Afghanistan for destinations like Turkey, Pakistan or anywhere that would take them. They include four of his uncles and an aunt, as well as dozens of cousins who are stuck in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, in the north.

So far, since the Taliban returned to power in August, Naseri says he knows of only one Uyghur who managed to leave Afghanistan — a woman who made it to Italy.

Uyghurs historically migrated to Afghanistan

Long before Naseri’s and Muhammad’s parents departed for Afghanistan, the country had already been home to Uyghurs for centuries.

«Most Uyghurs don’t profess to the same sort of Islam that the Taliban does, says Sean Roberts, a Georgetown University professor who has studied the Uyghurs. «[Uyghurs are] much more focused on gender equity in terms of their children’s career path and future. They may be religious, but they are not focused on Shariah law as the ultimate authority in their lives.

Well-established family, trade and pilgrimage networks connecting communities in China and Afghanistan were in large part why many Uyghurs leaving Communist Party-ruled China chose Afghanistan as a refuge.

Yet Uyghurs have faced difficulties shaking officials’ suspicions they are working with and sympathetic to militants. In 2001, the United States captured 22 Uyghurs in Afghanistan suspected of working with al-Qaida and sent them to Guantánamo Bay.

Roberts says most of the Uyghurs who ended up in the Guantánamo detention center were economic migrants who were actually sold by Pakistani bounty hunters to the U.S. government. «They were interrogated for months and months, and years in some cases, before the U.S. realized that these people were not a threat to the U.S. or really to anybody, he says.

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While most Uyghurs still live within modern China’s borders, for centuries before, they frequently crossed the Wakhan corridor to Afghanistan and beyond, as international merchants and on pilgrimages to Mecca.

«With the arrival of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, a lot of that movement stops, says Rian Thum, a professor at England’s University of Manchester who studies Uyghur cultural history. «But before that, the movement of caravans and individuals — even across really high mountain ranges and really long ocean distances — was extremely common.

Omer Khan, the director of a Uyghur advocacy group based in Pakistan, estimates he has contact with as many as 80 Uyghur families living in Afghanistan, largely in the country’s north, but an exact total number of the community in the country is unknown.

Life’s on hold since the Taliban returned

Among them are Muhammad and his relatives. His parents and grandparents were part of a community of Uyghur farmers and merchants in Ghulja, or Yining in Chinese, a city in northern Xinjiang. But they sought to escape ethnic discrimination and religious persecution under communist rule by making a daring bid: a trek through China’s narrow border with Afghanistan, through one of the highest mountain ranges in the world.

They survived and settled down briefly in Kabul before uprooting to Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, like Naseri’s family did. Muhammad did not return to Kabul until 2002, after the U.S. military flushed out the last shred of Taliban control.

Life was good for the nearly two decades afterward, especially for the women in Muhammad’s family. He set up a gem trading business. His wife, a doctor, had a job at an Afghan government hospital. His son is currently studying journalism. His eldest daughter finished her law degree this year.

But their lives were put on hold after the Taliban swept back into power this summer.

During the Shiite holiday of Ashura in mid-August, Muhammad convened an urgent family meeting. Panicked relatives made desperate proposals to smuggle themselves into Iran or Pakistan. Muhammad decided his priority is now to send his five children, ages 12 to 24, to any stable country that will take them.

But the family remains stuck in Afghanistan.

«My parents lived through years of war, and now I must suffer through war once again, says Muhammad. «My only wish is to bring my children to a place where they will be able to live in peace and receive an education.