Barely three years ago, the Taliban and Tajik government were exchanging threats and reinforcing their forces along the Afghan-Tajikistan border. The two parties eventually toned down their hostile rhetoric and have since slowly and quietly established a dialogue, but neither side comments much on their relations. That’s why a recent comment from a Taliban official could be considered big news.

Taliban Acting-Deputy Prime Minister for Political Affairs, Maulvi Abdul Kabir, said at the start of January that the Taliban government in Afghanistan is improving ties with all its neighbours and specifically mentioned Tajikistan.

Kabir pointed to the recent reopening of the Sherkhan-Bandar border crossing as providing important opportunities for merchants on both sides of the frontier, and said “extensive business connections exist between the two countries.”

Anti-Taliban Tajikistan

When the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, Tajikistan was the only Central Asian state that rejected contact with the militant group.

Among all the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon (above) is the only leader who was in power when the Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. Rahmon viewed the Taliban as a threat then and his opinion did not change when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan again nearly three and a half years ago, even though the governments of the other Central Asian states—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan—all established communications with Taliban officials in the first days after Kabul fell to the militants.

The animosity was reciprocated by the Taliban and before September 2021 was over, Tajikistan had conducted a series of military exercises near the Afghan border, some with Russian and Uzbek troops participating. Tajikistan’s military presence along the border was at the same time strengthened.

The Taliban in response sent militants from Jamaat Ansarullah to areas along the Tajik border. Jamaat Ansarullah is a terrorist group from Tajikistan that fought alongside the Taliban in the last years that foreign troops were in Afghanistan.

On September 25, 2021, the Taliban claimed they were sending “thousands of suicide bombers” to the northern Takhar Province in response to what Taliban Acting-First Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar said was Tajikistan’s interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.

Two days later, President Rahmon went to Tajikistan’s Darvaz district on the Afghan border to watch a military parade of some 2,000 members of the army, border guards and Interior Ministry troops.

Tajikistan’s tough stance on the Taliban earned Rahmon invitations to visit Belgium and France in October 2021 to discuss the situation in Afghanistan with officials there.

However, it is increasingly difficult for Tajikistan to remain an outlier in its policies toward the Taliban. It is not only Tajikistan’s Central Asian neighbours, but also Russia, China and Iran that are allowing Taliban representatives to occupy Afghan embassies in their countries.

All of these countries are also conducting trade and courting investment opportunities in Afghanistan with the Taliban.

The ISKP has launnched rockets into Tajikistan and is also a foe of the Taliban (Credit: Voice of Khorasan magazine).

One topic that concerns both Tajikistan and the Taliban is the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), a terrorist outfit that has carried out attacks in both Tajikistan and Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power.

The first official Tajik authorities sent to Afghanistan was former Tajik security officer Samariddin Chuyanzoda on May 14, 2022, one week after ISKP militants launched rockets from Afghanistan into Tajikistan.

In March 2023, a Taliban delegation visited the Afghan consulate in Tajikistan’s remote, eastern city of Khorog after the building sustained damage in an avalanche earlier in the year.

The Afghan embassy was still staffed by representatives of deposed Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, but it quickly became apparent that the Taliban delegation in Khorog was inspecting the consulate building prior to occupying it.

The Tajik government never commented publicly on the visit or the decision to allow Taliban representatives to staff the consulate.

At the start of September 2023, at least five border bazaars along  the Afghan frontier in Tajikistan’s eastern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) reopened for the first time since August 2021.

Business interests

While the Tajik authorities were loathe to establish communications with the Taliban when they returned to power, the cash-strapped Tajik government was anxious to continue electricity exports to its southern neighbour.

Power transmission lines connecting Tajikistan (and Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) to Afghanistan were built during the 20-year period this century when foreign troops were in Afghanistan.

Continuing electricity shipments was one issue on which the Tajik authorities and Taliban could easily agree.

In February 2024, the World Bank announced it was resuming construction of the Central Asia-South Asia (CASA) 1000 project. It aims to bring 1,300 megawatts (MW) of electricity annually from hydropower plants (HPPs) in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to consumers in Afghanistan (300 MW) and Pakistan (1,000 MW).

The change of rulers in Afghanistan in 2021 halted the project, but it could bring important revenue to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and both countries are currently moving ahead with massive HPP projects that promise to boost their electricity production.

Other Central Asian countries have been working with the Taliban to open trade routes from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan, India and the Arabian Sea.

The Rahmon government’s reluctance to engage with the Taliban could cost Tajikistan significant import and export opportunities as well as potentially lucrative transit fees on goods flowing between China and Afghanistan.

Perhaps the most important factor pushing Tajikistan and the Taliban to cooperate is Afghanistan-based ISKP.

ISKP has carried out dozens of attacks in Afghanistan since 2021 and besides firing rockets into Tajikistan in May 2022, which caused no damage of note, ISKP has been blamed for an assassination attempt on an official from Tajikistan’s ruling party in January 2024.

In early 2022, ISKP increased its media recruitment campaign targeting ethnic Tajiks in Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

The ISKP propaganda specifically called for overthrowing the Taliban and Rahmon and his government.

The campaign has been effective, not so much in terms of creating problems in Tajikistan, but certainly in attracting Tajik nationals to carry out attacks in other countries.

ISKP claimed responsibility for the attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall in March 2024 that left more than 140 people dead. Almost all the suspects Russia detained were Tajik nationals.

Prior to that attack, Tajik citizens had been involved in ISKP attacks, or in plotting attacks, in Iran, Turkey, Germany and Austria, as well as in Afghanistan.

How sustainable?

The common security and economic interests of the Tajik and Taliban governments are driving them to cooperate, but there is still great distrust between them.

Ethnic Tajik resistance leader Ahmad Massoud heads the anti-Taliban National Resistance Front, which is thought to have found refuge in Tajikistan (Credit: Hamid Mohammadi CC-BY-SA 4.0).

It is widely suspected that Rahmon’s is helping the mainly ethnic Tajik National Resistance Front (NRF) of former Afghan government soldiers who are still fighting the Taliban.

The Taliban at the same time still harbour Jamaat Ansarullah, despite requests from Tajik authorities to hand over the militants.

The Taliban did help arrange for Tajik government officials and Ansarullah to meet in November 2023 for talks, but nothing came of it and the Taliban are clear they will not hand over the militants.

To conclude, on the one hand, the tentative efforts made at cooperation have at least cooled heated verbal exchanges, while, on the other hand, the two sides are far from achieving friendly ties and their fragile cooperation could easily fall apart.