Category News

The Tajik government reported several armed incursions this month, straining its fragile relationship with Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders, as tensions are roiling along the Tajikstan-Afghanistan border.

More than a dozen people have been killed in attacks by men whom Tajik authorities call “terrorists” and the resulting clashes with Tajik forces, officials in Dushanbe and Beijing said. Chinese nationals are among the victims of the former Soviet Union’s mountainous terrain.

At least five people were killed in the most recent fighting this week, including “three terrorists,” according to officials in the Shamsiddin Shokhin district of Tajikistan.

Tajikistan has long opposed the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a country it shares a largely unsecured 1, 340km (830-mile) border with.

The frequency of recent border clashes raises questions about the Taliban’s ability to impose order and security, and despite the two countries’ cautious diplomatic exchanges to adjust to new regional realities, according to analysts.

What is known about the clashes along the Tajik-Afghan border and why they are important:

What is going on at the border of Tajikistan and Afghanistan?

The border passes through southern Tajikistan’s and northeastern Afghanistan’s remote, mountainous terrain along the Panj river.

On Thursday, Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security said in a statement that “three members of a terrorist organisation” crossed into Tajik territory on Tuesday. The men were located the following morning and engaged in firefighting with Tajik border guards, according to the committee. According to the report, three intruders and five others were killed.

Tajik officials did not name the armed men or specify which group they belonged to. The authorities claimed at the scene that they had discovered three M-16 rifles, a Kalashnikov assault rifle, three foreign-made pistols with silencers, ten hand grenades, a night vision scope, and explosives.

Dushanbe claimed that this was the third attack in the past month that amounted to the death of its personnel. It was carried out by Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province.

These attacks, Tajik officials said on Thursday, “prove that the Taliban government is demonstrating serious and repeated irresponsibility and non-commitment in fulfilling its international obligations and consistent promises to ensure security … and to combat members of terrorist organisations”.

The Taliban were asked to “apologise to the people of Tajikistan and take effective measures to ensure security along the shared border,” according to the Tajik statement.

Although Tajikistan has not stated what the attack’s intentions may be, they have reportedly targeted Chinese businesses and residents employed there.

How does China manage to get all this?

With a sizable footprint in infrastructure, mining, and other border-region projects, Beijing is the country’s largest creditor and one of its most powerful economic partners.

China and Tajikistan also share a 477km (296-mile) border running through the high-altitude Pamir Mountains in eastern Tajikistan, adjacent to China’s Xinjiang region.

In the final week of November, two attacks were launched against Chinese businesses and individuals. Three Chinese nationals were killed when a drone carrying an explosive device attacked a compound owned by Shohin SM, a private Chinese gold-mining company, on November 26 in the remote Khatlon region of Tajikik-Afghanistan.

In a second attack on November 30, a group of men armed with guns opened fire on workers employed by the state-owned China Road and Bridge Corporation, killing at least two people in Tajikistan’s Darvoz district.

According to Tajik officials, those attacks took place in villages in the province of Badakhshan in Afghanistan, but they did not reveal any affiliations or motivations.

In Pakistan’s Balochistan province and along the Afghan-Pakistan border, Chinese nationals are also targeted.

China’s embassy in Dushanbe advised Chinese companies and personnel to evacuate the border area. According to Chinese officials, Tajikistan should take all necessary steps to protect the safety of Chinese businesses and citizens there.

Who is the perpetrator of these attacks?

While the attackers have not been identified, analysts and observers believe the attacks carry the hallmarks of the ISIL (ISIS) affiliate in Khorasan Province (ISKP), which, they said, aims to discredit Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders.

According to Ibraheem Bahiss, an analyst at the International Crisis Group in Kabul, “The ISKP has attacked foreigners inside Afghanistan and carried out attacks on foreigners inside Afghanistan as a key pillar of their strategy.”

According to Bahiss, “the goal is to transform the Taliban’s standing as a security provider into something that regional governments should work with.”

What response has the Taliban given to these attacks?

Kabul expressed its “deep sorrow” over the killings of Chinese workers on November 28.

The Taliban placed the blame for the violence on an unnamed armed group, which, according to the Taliban, is “striving to create chaos and instability in the region and to sow distrust among countries,” and gave Tajikistan the assurance of full cooperation.

The Taliban’s interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, said Kabul is still committed to the 2020 Doha Agreement, which allows for a gradual withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan in exchange for Taliban commitments to stop Afghanistan from acting as a base for attacks on other nations.

Addressing a police cadet graduation ceremony at the National Police Academy in Kabul on Thursday, Haqqani said Afghanistan posed no threat to other countries and the door to dialogue remains open.

We want to talk through dialogue about issues, mistrust, or miscommunications. The confrontational test has been passed. We may be weak in resources, but our faith and will are strong”, he said, adding that security had improved to the extent that Taliban officials now travel across the country without weapons.

No “terrorist groups” are operating out of Afghanistan, according to the Taliban. The UN sanctions-monitoring committee recently cited the presence of several armed groups, including ISKP, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, al-Qaeda, the Turkistan Islamic Party, Jamaat Ansarullah, and Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan.

Jamaat Ansarullah is a Tajik group linked to al-Qaeda-aligned networks and active primarily in northern Afghanistan near the Tajik border.

How do Tajikistan and the Taliban interact?

For decades, the relationship between Tajikistan and the Taliban has been defined by deep ideological hostility and ethnic mistrust with Dushanbe one of the group’s fiercest critics in Central Asia.

Tajikistan joined the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which was led by former defense minister and military leader Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Tajikistan was the only country in its neighbors to object to the new government’s official recognition following the Taliban’s resumption of power in Afghanistan in August 2021.

However, pragmatic diplomatic engagement quietly began about 2023, driven by economic necessity and shared security fears over the presence of ISKP. A senior Tajik delegation made its first trip to Kabul since the Taliban’s return to power in November, accelerating the restoration of relations there.

However, the two governments continue to exchange accusations that one country has “terrorists,” which is a significant thorn in bilateral relations, and that drug trafficking is occurring across their borders.

The Tajik-Afghan border has long been a major trafficking route for Afghan heroin and methamphetamine into Central Asia and onwards to Russia and Europe, exploiting the area’s rugged terrain and weak policing.

The rising frequency of clashes is intriguing and new, and it raises the possibility of a new threat, according to Bahiss.

The Taliban has struggled to stop the threat from armed opposition groups, according to Bahiss, and Badakshan province, from which Tajik authorities claim the attacks on Chinese citizens come.

This security issue has been further complicated by the Taliban’s crackdown on poppy cultivation in the province, he said. Farmers in the north have resisted this policy, and the Taliban has. Poppies are the only viable cash crop because of the terrain in Badakshan, a major reason for this.

How are other neighbors and the Taliban faring?

Some of its neighbors have maintained a pragmatic transactional relationship since the Taliban retakes control of Afghanistan in 2021, whereas others haven’t.

Relations with Pakistan, previously its patron, have particularly deteriorated. Islamabad accuses Kabul of houseing Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s (also known as the Pakistan Taliban) fighters. When Pakistan launched air strikes in Kabul, Khost, and other provinces in November, sparking retaliatory Taliban attacks on border posts, tensions erupted over this matter.

Dozens of people were killed before a ceasefire was brokered by Qatar and Turkiye. Since then, both sides have been fighting, accusing one another of breaking the fragile truce.

The Taliban blames Pakistan for its “own security failures,” rejecting Islamabad’s claims.