Young refugees dream of life outside Central Asia

Ethnic Kyrgyz refugees from Tajikistan find life in Kyrgyzstan enjoyable, but prefer to move to a third country to build their lives. “We escaped Tajikistan and took refuge in Kyrgyzstan to spend the winter. Five years later, we are still here,” Farid Karimov, a 20-year-old refugee from Tajikistan now living in a village outside the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, told IRIN. The 1991-1996 Tajik civil war claimed thousands of lives and put hundreds of thousands on the road to exile. The conflict affected all parts of Tajikistan, including the northeastern Karategin Valley, home of Tajikistan’s ethnic Kyrgyz community, estimated to have numbered 70,000 before the war. The Karimov family of seven left their home village after opposition and government troops exchanged fire and bombed their home. Karimov’s uncle invited the whole family in 1996 to spend the winter safely in Kyrgyzstan. Soon after arriving, Karimov’s mother found a job as a doctor in a hospital for Tajik refugees outside Bishkek, and the whole family settled there. Another young refugee from the civil war in Tajikistan, who escaped together with her two siblings and parents, was 21 year-old Zarina Rakhmonova. Arriving in 1994, she and her family settled in a village east of Bishkek, where her parents now work as farmers. “Like most people from Tajikistan, we actually never applied for refugee status,” Rakhmonova told IRIN. “We just kept our Tajik passports and have managed to settle down,” she said. In the mid-1990s, Kyrgyzstan opened its borders to refugees from its southern neighbour, Tajikistan, as well as from Afghanistan and Chechnya. Today, the country hosts around 13,000 refugees. Eighty percent of the 10,000 refugees from Tajikistan are ethnic Kyrgyz. “I want to get a Kyrgyz passport, it’s much easier to travel to Russia. With a Tajik passport, you are constantly harassed at the Kazakh or Uzbek borders because they think you carry drugs, or you are a mujahedin,” Rakhmonova said. According to Karimov, when his family arrived in Bishkek, they were offered Kyrgyz citizenship because of their Kyrgyz origins, but refused, thinking they would return to Tajikistan. He can now apply for Kyrgyz citizenship, having lived five years in the country. In 2001, 52 ethnic Kyrgyz from Tajikistan were granted Kyrgyz citizenship, but Karimov’s parents did not apply. Nor did they enrol in the repatriation programme. In May-June, the Kyrgyz government organised the repatriation of 100 Tajik refugees, and about 1,000 refugees are expected to return to Tajikistan by the end of this year. “Right now, I am studying Russian literature in Bishkek, but now I want to change to computer engineering,” Karimov said. “As soon as I get my Kyrgyz passport, I will leave for Russia,” he added. While Karimov maintained that discrimination was not the motivation for leaving Kyrgyzstan, he explained: “I feel Tajik, even though two of my grandparents are Kyrgyz. At home we spoke Tajik, and Kyrgyzstan or Frunze [the former name of Bishkek during the Soviet period] were faraway places I never thought I would see. Once a year we would play Kyrgyz music and songs, and that was all,” he said. “Kyrgyzstan offers us a good chance to study. In Tajikistan, the civil war destroyed the entire university system, and the level there is very low. Besides, here we have a peaceful environment for my family. In Tajikistan, the situation is now stable, but we have lost years to the civil war, and they need to catch up.” Rakhmonova, who went to a Russian school and entered a Bishkek university three years ago to study economics and English, said she also planned to leave Kyrgyzstan. “I also speak Turkish, because I took evening classes. My boyfriend is Turkish, and we plan to move to Turkey when I graduate. Kyrgyzstan is just a transition place for me, as I feel Tajik and I am terribly homesick.” Every summer, she returns to Dushanbe, but admits she has no plans to live there on a regular basis. As Kyrgyzstan struggles with unemployment and poverty, the main motivation for Tajik young people to leave is economic. “I want to go to Russia because of the economic opportunities,” Rakhmonova explained. “It’s easier to settle there, I know the language and the mentality. Russia is big enough. All I want is to find a job, have a house and work,” she added. An estimated one million Tajiks live in Russia, 80 percent of them in their late teens and early twenties. As for returning to Tajikistan, Karimov admits laughingly: “When I have earned money and can retire, I will buy a house in Dushanbe.” Farid Karimov and Zarina Rakhmonova are invented names, as the persons interviewed asked for their real names not to be disclosed.