77 Kyrgyz of Afghan Pamirs flee into Tajikistan’s GBAO due to threat emanating from the Taliban

77 ethnic Kyrgyz from Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor, including 26 men, 20 women and 31 children, crossed the Afghan-Tajik border into Qizil-Rabot jamoat of Murgab district in the Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO) Tuesday afternoon, at 4:00 pm, the Main Border Guard Directorate of the State Committee for National Security of Tajikistan said in its statement released on July 14. 

All of them are reportedly residents of Andemin village in Wakhan district of Afghanistan Badakhshan province.  

Tajik border guards reportedly admitted the fleeing people out of a sense of “humanism and good neighborliness.” 

The statement says the refugees have also brought livestock with them, including 1000 heads of small, three camels, 300 yaks and 30 horses. 

The refugees have been placed in Qizil-Rabot jamoat of GBAO’s Murgab district.  

The statement notes that the situation along this stretch of the Tajik-Afghan border is under control of the Tajik border guards. 

According to some sources, today's Pamir Kyrgyz in the Wakhan Corridor are descendants of the nomadic herders who sought safety there in 1916.  So they adapted their pastoral nomadic structure to a much more constrained environment, living in the Pamir Mountains of Afghanistan full time.

Some sources say several thousand ethnic Kyrgyz have lived in Afghanistan for a century, while other sources say there is 1,500 person community of ethnic Kyrgyz in Afghan Pamirs.