Russia Should Think Twice About Inviting Afghan Farmhands To Chechnya & Tatarstan

It’s unclear why Russia is exploring the import of migrants from much more fundamentalist and dangerous Afghanistan who struggle to assimilate and integrate while scrutinizing migrants from much more secular and safer Tajikistan who have a history of assimilating and integrating into new societies.

The Taliban’s Acting Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Abdul Mannan Omari revealed after his return from Russia’s top economic forum last week that he discussed “creating job opportunities for Afghans, particularly in agriculture in the republics of Chechnya and Tatarstan.” This contradicted some observers’ assumption that he was exploring the possibility of Russian laborers – specifically members of its Muslim minority – coming to Afghanistan to help construct some of the megaprojects that it might soon host.

His disclosure was surprising considering the new security policies that are now reportedly applied towards arrivals from neighboring Tajikistan after spring’s Crocus terrorist attack in which the Afghan-based ISIS-K was involved. Patriarch Kirill also warned last year that “the whole Russian world is under threat” from some migrants’ refusal to assimilate and integrate into society, later adding on a separate occasion that this “threaten(s) interreligious and interethnic peace and harmony.”

Afghans aren’t known for assimilating abroad, and many have PTSD among other psychological issues after the four decades of warfare that they’ve lived through, thus making them a very difficult group of migrants to manage for non-Muslim countries whose values clash with the Afghans’ deeply pious ones. There’s also no way to verify that a migrating farmhand isn’t still involved in the drug trade, has combat experience with the Taliban, and/or ties with ISIS-K, thus opening Russia up to a panoply of security risks.

It’s unclear why Russia is exploring the import of migrants from much more fundamentalist and dangerous Afghanistan who struggle to assimilate and integrate while scrutinizing migrants from much more secular and safer Tajikistan who have a history of assimilating and integrating into new societies. One would have thought that Russia would therefore rule out Afghan migrants in principle, but that’s evidently not the case as revealed by Omari, but it would do well to think twice about this.

“Russia Is Preparing To Strategically Partner With The Taliban” for the reasons explained in the preceding hyperlinked analysis, which include clinching deals on the megaprojects that were described in the introductory paragraph’s second hyperlinked analysis, both of which are beyond the scope of this piece. This policy advances Russia’s interests in the New Cold War, but it doesn’t obligate the country to expose itself up to the panoply of security risks that could be brought about by importing Afghan migrants.

While it’s true that Russia is “facing a terrible demographic hole” like Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko warned last week regarding its expected shortage of 2.4 million workers by 2030, its high Muslim birth rate might mitigate the damage. The Grand Mufti predicted in 2019 that nearly one-third of Russians will be Muslim by 2030, and President Putin said during last week’s forum that “We are not against the increase in the Islamic population, on the contrary, we are happy with what is happening”.

His new plans to prioritize automation could combine with this demographic trend to help plug Russia’s “terrible demographic hole” and thus reduce the need for more migrants to that end. If this doesn’t work out, then Russia could just continue relying on migrants from much more secular and safer Central Asia who have a history of assimilating and integrating instead of turning to unreliable Afghans. Should more seasonal migrant labor be required, then Indians would be a much safer and reliable alternative.

Russia therefore doesn’t have any objective need to import Afghan migrants, especially when considering the security risks that this entails, which could also include Pashtuns clashing with Russia’s Tajik migrants when recalling those two ethnic groups’ well-known problems inside of Afghanistan. It might thus have been the case that the Muslim leaders of Russia’s Chechnya and Tatarstan Republics nobly but naively thought that this would be a way to show solidarity with their suffering co-religionists.

This conjecture would account for why they discussed the possible import of Afghan labor with Omari despite there being no need for it as was explained. Their hearts are in the right place if that was indeed their intention, but it would be better for everyone if they invested some of their respective republics’ reserves into Afghan-based projects for bettering their co-religionists’ lives inside their own country. They also can’t say for certainty that the federal authorities would approve of this migrant plan either.

Chechnya and Tatarstan are autonomous just like Russia’s other sub-national republics, but the federal government still has the power to decide who enters the country, and there are plenty of reasons why the security services might advise them to oppose the import of Afghan migrants. Nevertheless, potentially misguided political calculations from the Foreign Ministry might prevail in overruling them, so it’s possible that this will happen. If it does, however, then Russia must closely monitor these migrants.