Tajikistan Becomes Latest Victim of Cross-border Attacks from Afghanistan 

Tajikistan Becomes Latest Victim of Cross-border Attacks from Afghanistan 

Executive Summary:

• In late 2025, Tajikistan faced deadly cross-border attacks from Afghanistan, including November drone strikes killing five Chinese miners and a December 24 clash killing two Tajik officers.
• Militant groups, potentially including Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), operate from Afghan safe havens. This regional threat has prompted neighboring states to take a firmer stance against the Taliban and demand the eradication of terrorism.
• Consequently, Tajikistan is heavily fortifying its border by building numerous new security checkpoints in response to the danger stemming from Afghanistan.

On December 24, 2025, five people—including two Tajik officers—were killed in an armed clash between Tajikistan’s security forces and three militants, who were trying to enter Tajikistan through the 870-mile-long border with Afghanistan (Radio Ozodi, December 24, 2025). Tajik authorities claimed it was the third militant act, or illegal border crossing, from Afghanistan into Tajikistan in December alone. The State Committee for National Security called for the Taliban to apologize over repeated cross-border attacks and criticized the Afghan government’s repeated irresponsibility in fulfilling its international commitments to ensure security and stability along the Tajik–Afghan border (Afghanistan International, December 25, 2025).

Coinciding with this, in November 2025, five Chinese nationals involved in mining operations were killed, and another five were injured in Tajikistan in a pair of drone attacks launched from Afghanistan (Express Tribune, December 2, 2025). Only one year earlier, in November 2024, another Chinese citizen was killed and five others, including a Tajik citizen, were wounded in an attack from Afghanistan on Chinese engineers who were working at a gold mine along the Tajik-Afghan border (Afghanistan International, November 19, 2024). These incidents underscore the relative ease with which militants are still able to operate from safe havens in Taliban-led Afghanistan.

ISKP’s Potential Role

No militant group has claimed the recent attacks launched on targets inside Tajikistan from across the border in Afghanistan. The anti-Taliban Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), however, is believed to have carried out the attacks on Chinese nationals in Tajikistan to undermine the Taliban’s credibility as a regional security provider. In January 2025, ISKP similarly claimed responsibility for the murder of a Chinese national in Afghanistan’s Takhar province, close to the border with Tajikistan (Special Eurasia, January 27, 2025). In May 2022, furthermore, ISKP claimed it launched rocket attacks on targets inside Tajikistan from Afghanistan’s Takhar province (Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, May 11, 2022).

A UN Security Council report found the Taliban’s claim that militant groups are not using Afghan territory for cross-border attacks to be “not credible,” asserting that neighboring states increasingly see Afghanistan as a source of regional insecurity. According to the report, in addition to ISKP,  the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), al-Qaeda, Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), Jamaat Ansarullah, and Ittihadul Mujahideen Pakistan are also operating in Afghanistan (UN Security Council, December 9, 2025; Dawn, December 18, 2025).

The growing operational capacity of Afghanistan-based militant groups is therefore causing anxiety among regional states. At a December 14, 2025, meeting in Tehran, Pakistan was most vocal in pressing the Taliban to expel all militant groups from Afghanistan, with special representatives for Afghan affairs from Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, China, and Russia in attendance (Dawn, December 14, 2025). All the participating countries agreed that the continued threat of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan was a major challenge and stressed the need to meaningfully engage with the Taliban to address terrorism and realize Afghanistan’s economic potential.

Tajikistan’s Response

Tajikistan is bolstering its border security by deploying additional troops along its border with Afghanistan. The country has tense relations with the Taliban regime since it came to power in 2021. In the more than four years of Taliban governance, several border clashes and skirmishes have broken out between Taliban fighters and Tajikistani border forces (Dawn, November 27, 2025). In August 2025, for example, the Taliban and Tajik forces exchanged fire over issues related to drug movements along the border (Times of Central Asia, November 28, 2025). No official statement on the border clash was issued from either side. Still, both sides also engaged in a blame game, with Taliban officials accusing Tajikistan of training 350 members of the anti-Taliban National Resistance Front (NRF) and Tajik officials alleging that the Taliban is sheltering militants(Afghanistan International, August 27, 2025).

The December 24, 2025, attack that killed two Tajik officers was launched on the same day that Tajikistan inaugurated four new checkpoints built in the mountainous region of the border with Afghanistan. President Emomali Rahmon also participated in the ceremony online. This was among 80 other border checkpoints that Tajikistan built on its border with Afghanistan since the Taliban took over Kabul in 2021 (Radio Ozodi, December 24, 2025).

Conclusion 

The Taliban’s lax policy towards militant groups on Afghan soil has returned the country to a haven for militants posing a security threat to regional states. It is not only Pakistan, but Afghanistan’s other neighbors, such as Tajikistan, that are also facing cross-border terrorism from Afghan soil (Dawn, December 19, 2025). The Taliban agreed under the Doha Accords, signed in 2020 with the United States, to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven (Dawn, February 29, 2020). Ongoing reports of cross-border attacks, however, show signs that the Taliban is violating its obligations and that other regional states may become victims of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan aside from Pakistan and Tajikistan if current trends continue.