ISLAMABAD: Growing instability along the Tajik-Afghan frontier has triggered alarm in Dushanbe after two cross-border attacks in less than a week left five Chinese workers dead and several others wounded.
The escalation, involving drone strikes and armed raids from Afghan territory, prompted Tajik President Emomali Rahmon to summon an emergency meeting with security chiefs to reassess border protection and confront what officials describe as increasingly “provocative” actions from across the border.
According to an official statement published on the president’s website, the meeting reviewed the “current situation along the Tajik-Afghan border and ways to strengthen its protection.” Rahmon sharply condemned what he described as “illegal and provocative actions” by Afghan nationals and instructed authorities to take effective measures to prevent further incidents.
The Tajik leadership expressed deep concern over the rapid escalation in violence, describing the assaults as a direct threat to national security and regional stability.
Chinese Workers Targeted in Mountainous Badakhshan
Radio Liberty’s Tajik service, Ozodi, reported that two Chinese road-construction workers were killed in the Darvoz district of Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region when armed attackers crossed over from Afghanistan. The incident occurred in the village of Shudk in the Vushkharv area, where Chinese engineers were working on a gallery of the newly built “Qalai Khumb–Vanj–Rushan” border highway.
Few additional details are available, but local sources told Ozodi that the workers were targeted while working inside the small tunnel structure.
On 30 November, Russian political analyst Andrey Serenko reported on Telegram that two Chinese workers were killed and two were injured in the Shudk border area.
However, Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry later clarified that the attack had been carried out using an armed drone “equipped with grenades and firearms,” launched from Afghan territory.
In a statement, the ministry said Tajikistan continues efforts to stabilise security along the frontier, but despite those efforts, “criminal groups operating on Afghan soil continue destructive actions.”
A separate post by Serenko—citing Afghanistan International—claimed the attack originated from the Rezawi district in Afghan Badakhshan and that Taliban border forces from the Maymay area may have taken part. According to informed sources, the two Chinese victims were working on a road project when they were shot dead with small arms.
Serenko added that neither China, Tajikistan, nor the Taliban’s foreign ministry had issued an official statement, and suggested that some factions within the Taliban may be trying to force Chinese companies out of gold-mining concessions in Badakhshan. He warned that “further lethal attacks on Chinese workers in mining zones cannot be ruled out.”
He also claimed that, following the latest attack, clashes had erupted between Taliban fighters from Kandahar and Badakhshan over access to lucrative mining areas.
Second Attack in Less Than a Week
The attack in Shudk came less than one week after another deadly incident. On 26 November, three Chinese employees of a gold-mining company were killed in a drone attack launched from Afghanistan. Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry said the drone was “equipped with firearms and grenades” and condemned the assault as a grave act of terrorism.
China, Pakistan, Iran, and the Afghan Taliban all condemned the strike, while Beijing advised its citizens to leave border regions immediately.
The Tajik-Afghan border — stretching 1,344 kilometres across some of Central Asia’s most rugged terrain — has seen a sharp rise in shootings, drone incursions and smuggling-linked clashes over the past year.
A similar attack last year killed one Chinese worker and injured five others, including four Chinese nationals and one Tajik citizen.
According to the privately owned Tajik news agency Asia-Plus, Tajik security forces have been involved in at least 10 armed clashes with Afghan drug-smuggling groups over the past six months. Four Afghan smugglers were killed in these incidents.
On 22 November, Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security (SCNS) reported using drones to eliminate a seven-member Afghan smuggling group attempting to cross the border overnight between 20 and 21 November. Two bodies were recovered the next morning along with 116 packets of narcotics; the remaining five smugglers remain unaccounted for.
Tajikistan sits along a major drug-trafficking route leading from Afghanistan toward Europe, and the mountainous terrain makes border control extremely challenging. Officials warn that rising insecurity, combined with the growing influence of criminal networks and rival armed factions inside Afghanistan, has turned the frontier into one of the region’s most volatile flashpoints.
