Russia deports Tajik migrants

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan -- Russia began deporting Tajik migrants yesterday, the first in a wave of expulsions in apparent retaliation for the jailing of a Russian pilot in the Central Asian nation, officials in Tajikistan said.

The spat threatens to imperil the livelihood of thousands of Tajik laborers and stir discontent in a country struggling to protect its border with Afghanistan. The former Soviet nation's economy relies heavily on the remittances provided by the many hundreds of thousands of Tajiks working in Russia. Over the past year, Moscow has been attempting to strong-arm Tajikistan into permitting Russian border troops to resume patrols of the rugged 840-mile frontier with Afghanistan.

Tajik authorities have responded testily to such overtures, which they view as an attempt by the Kremlin to dilute their country's sovereignty. Russia, meanwhile, grumbles that Tajik troops are not up to stemming the huge flow of heroin streaming north from Afghanistan. This latest dispute is likely to undermine efforts to deepen cooperation on enhancing regional security.

Tajikistan's migration service said 11 Tajiks were set to fly out from Moscow yesterday after authorities ruled they had violated migration rules. They were among about 300 Tajiks detained in recent days.

Vladimir Lobanov, acting head of a detention center in Moscow, confirmed that some of the detained Tajiks have been deported and preparations were being made to deport the others. The detentions immediately followed the convictions last week of pilots Vladimir Sadovnichy and Estonian citizen Alexei Rudenko, who were arrested in Tajikistan in March after landing two cargo planes for refueling while flying from Afghanistan to Moscow.

A Tajik court found them guilty of illegally flying into Tajikistan and smuggling aircraft parts, and sentenced them to 8 1/2 years in prison. Their two An-72 aircraft were seized. The case has provoked a xenophobia-tinged uproar in Russia. "The decision to deport several hundred Tajik migrants is an utterly inept and illegal move," said Arkady Dubnov, who writes on Central Asia affairs for the Russian daily newspaper Moskovskiye Novosti.

President Dmitry Medvedev has denied the deportation is linked to the pilots' conviction, but has hinted at more expulsions. Tajikistan, a mountainous largely Muslim nation of 7 million people that won independence in 1991, has been battling to restore its economy since a brutal civil war in the 1990s that claimed more than 60,000 lives.