А. Grozin: Post-Soviet countries may become transit territory for refugees from Afghanistan

18 августа 2021

Not only Taliban may pose a real threat. There are other terrorist groups in the territory of Afghanistan: Islamic State, Islamic Jihad Union, Al-Qaeda, East Turkestan and others. These are thousands of armed non-Afghan citizens.  Another threat is refugees. Our states can become transit territories for them.  

Andrei Grozin, political scientist and senior fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, gave this opinion to our TV channel. 

Andrei Grozin, political scientist, senior fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences:


The European press is already overflown with apocalyptic texts about 1 or 2 million Afghan refugees coming in the EU countries. They are now competing there in estimating how many Afghans will end up in the EU territory in the near future. Our countries run the risk that tens of thousands, if not millions, of people may come through the transit territory. It is hard to say what kind of people they will be. Because some of them have worked with the Americans, some of them just want to go to the EU, some of them have terrorist aspirations and it is very difficult to filter and check all these people. That is, they can pose a threat to us as well, not only as a transit territory, but they can simply try to transfer radical ideas not only to Central Asia, but to all post-Soviet countries. This applies to the Caucasus, Russia, and the countries of Eastern Europe.  


"I think that if the Taliban doesn't start tough repressions against supporters of the former government, against, frankly speaking, American collaborators, there won't be a big flow of refugees either. Those who really want to flee and they really need it, those who fear retaliation from the Taliban, they are now at Karzai airport, and one way or another will leave the territory of Afghanistan and it concerns us to a lesser extent. It will be a problem for Albania, which has already agreed to accept them, it will be a problem for Italy, Britain, Germany, Austria, let them deal with it," the political scientist added.