Abdul Kabir Vakil Khan came from Kazakhstan to the Afghan city of Mazari Sharif in July to help his family members, who are ethnic Kazakhs, to move to the homeland of their ancestors, Radio Free Europe writes in English.
Instead, Vakil Khan has been stuck in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power in the war-torn country in August.
The Kazakh embassy in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, was working to issue a relocation permit for Vakil Khan's parents and several of his relatives.
They were among dozens of Afghan nationals seeking resettlement through a special Kazakh government program that helps ethnic Kazakhs from abroad immigrate to the Central Asian country.
However, the Taliban's rise to power put relocation plans on hold. The Kazakh embassy in Kabul has restricted its work, issuing passports has been suspended, while most international flights have been suspended.
Unable to leave Afghanistan, Vakil Khan was trying to secure visas for his family members to travel to Kazakhstan. This 58-year-old, himself born in Afghanistan, moved to Kazakhstan some 15 years ago.
"A group of people are gathering in front of the embassy these days," Vakil Khan told RFE/RL's Kazakh service. "Like me, many of them came from Kazakhstan to get visas for their relatives".
Kazakh authorities claim that only about 200 ethnic Kazakhs remain in Afghanistan. However, ethnic Kazakhs in Afghanistan estimate the number to be much higher.
Many members of the ethnic Kazakh community are believed to be descendants of people who arrived in northern Afghanistan from Central Asia in the 20s and 30s.
Many of them speak Dari or Uzbek and live in ethnic Uzbek communities in northern Afghanistan. Most of them live in rural areas and engage in animal husbandry.
According to official data, about 13.000 ethnic Kazakhs from Afghanistan have immigrated to Kazakhstan since the beginning of the 90s.
Kazakhstan offers citizenship to ethnic Kazakhs who return to their ancestral homeland from abroad.
About a million ethnic Kazakhs from Uzbekistan, China and other neighboring countries have moved to the oil-rich Central Asian country since the 90s.
The Kazakh government offers them financial incentives, subsidized housing and other benefits. Those benefits come with a condition – they have to move to the sparsely populated northern regions of Kazakhstan where there are not enough workers.
Not everyone wants to move to the north of Kazakhstan, which is known for its harsh winters. Those who stay elsewhere in Kazakhstan receive no support from the government.
'Documentation issues'
Kazakh authorities have said they are committed to helping ethnic Kazakhs in Afghanistan.
Shortly after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, Kazakh President Kassim-Jomart Tokayev ordered his government to organize the evacuation of ethnic Kazakhs with Afghan citizenship from Kabul.
On September 9, Kazakhstan evacuated 35 ethnic Kazakhs on a special flight from Kabul to Almaty.
However, Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry said last week that the evacuation of ethnic Kazakhs from Afghanistan had been "suspended", citing the "political situation as well as documentation problems in Afghanistan".
When the Taliban took over, dozens of Afghans who claimed to be ethnic Kazakhs sought help from the Kazakh embassy to resettle in Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced at the end of August that it had established a special commission at the embassy to review each case.
Kazakh officials said many applicants from Afghanistan have difficulty proving their Kazakh roots.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Aibek Smadiyarov said many applicants were "unable to provide any documents" to prove their Kazakh ethnicity or establish when their relatives first came to Afghanistan.
"Some of them don't even have basic knowledge of the Kazakh language," Smadiyarov told reporters at the end of August.
Amanullah Nazari, an Afghan who moved to Kazakhstan in 2019, said many ethnic Kazakhs in Afghanistan are illiterate and often live in remote rural areas. He said many community members probably don't even know about the resettlement program.
The lack of travel documents has also hampered the resettlement of ethnic Kazakhs from Afghanistan, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled in recent months due to Taliban repression and a devastating humanitarian and economic crisis.
Passport offices across Afghanistan have been frequently closed since August.
And even those who get passports and foreign visas can hardly leave Afghanistan, since international flights have been almost completely suspended since the Taliban took power.
A family of Afghan Kazakhs living in the city of Shymkent in the south of Kazakhstan told RFE/RL that their relatives – 38 people in total – were supposed to come to Kazakhstan from Afghanistan's Faryab province in July.
After their resettlement documents were approved, they were planning their trip when the Taliban took over.
"We sent them money (for plane tickets), but it won't be enough anymore," said Hangama Abdul Karim, a Kazakh citizen who has relatives in Afghanistan. "We cannot afford to pay for their arrival on connecting flights (via other countries)".
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