Tajikistan Maintains Cool Ties with the Taliban Jacob Zenn Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, several Central Asian states have accepted the reality on the ground and engaged the Taliban. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, for example, began initiating dialogue with the Taliban in... MORE

In mid-February, as Russians and Afghans mark the 33rd anniversary of the final withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, both countries are beefing up their forces along the Afghan-Tajikistani border. The trigger has been a renewed deterioration of the security situation in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous... MORE

Street clashes in Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan region have quieted down at least for the present, but in their wake, geopolitical competition there has, if anything, increased. Russia and China are assuming an ever more active role for at least three reasons: 1) the region’s location on... MORE

The extrajudicial murder of a local Pamiri activist by state security police in the mountainous and impoverished Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast of Tajikistan has sparked violent protests in that region’s capital, Khorog. The mass demonstrations have so far claimed at least three other lives and left... MORE

Anti-Taliban Resistance Struggles for Relevance in Afghanistan After initially attempting to launch an insurgency against the Taliban following the its conquest of Kabul in August, Ahmad Massoud,  the son of the legendary anti-Soviet mujahideen leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, and deposed Vice President of Afghanistan, Amrullah... MORE

On October 18–23, the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which includes Afghanistan as an observer, held its Combat Brotherhood 2021 strategic military exercises, with three drills codenamed Echelon-2021, Search-2021 and Interaction-2021, in southern Tajikistan’s Momirak and Harb Maydon military ranges. The scale was substantial,... MORE

The governments of Russia and Pakistan are uneasy over the continued tensions between Tajikistan and the Taliban-led Afghanistan, and they are urging both neighbors to exercise restraint. The exchange of fiery statements between Dushanbe and Kabul, combined with recent friction along the Tajikistani-Afghan border, have... MORE

On September 20, Tashkent hosted a conference on the topic “Russia and Uzbekistan facing the challenges of development and security at a new historical stage of interaction.” This gathering, jointly organized by Russia’s Valdai International Discussion Club and the Institute for Strategic and Interregional Studies... MORE

Uzbekistan and Tajikistan Calibrate Approaches to the Taliban On September 11, the grand mufti of Tajikistan, Saidmukarrim Abdulqoddirzoda, issued an edict calling the Taliban a “terrorist group” and declared that the Taliban’s behavior was “far from Islam.” In particular, the grand mufti focused on the... MORE

When the Taliban swept into Kabul on August 15, many assumed that this would lead to a shakeup of the geopolitical order in neighboring Central Asia, with the countries there either seeking protection from the Russian Federation or moving to cooperate more closely with each... MORE