A flare-up in violence along Tajikistan and Afghanistan’s winding 854-mile (1,374-kilometre) border in recent months has helped spur shifts in Tajik foreign policy.

Earlier in March, the Tajik parliament approved a deal under which China will finance and build nine border posts along the frontier, highlighting China’s deepening involvement in its neighbour’s security. 

The second development is stepped-up engagement with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In December, the Taliban’s foreign minister held two calls with his Tajik counterpart. Then, in February, he met with the Tajik ambassador in Kabul, marking the highest-level contacts between the two countries since the Taliban regained power in August 2021. The diplomatic overtures show that Dushanbe’s initial wariness of the Taliban’s return is transforming into a more open diplomatic posture.

These recent moves were catalysed by a string of cross-border attacks which left a total of five Chinese citizens dead in November. Shoot-outs with smugglers resulted in seven Afghans and two Tajik border guards killed in late December and mid-January. Taliban officials blamed the November incidents on militant groups operating beyond Kabul’s control.

The violence came against the backdrop of increasing insecurity along the border, much of which follows the flow of the Panj River through rugged terrain. There were 17 armed incidents along the border last year compared to six in 2024 while drug seizures moved up nearly 50%, reaching 2.82 tonnes in 2025, according to Zafar Samad, director of the Tajik Narcotics Control Agency.

On March 4, the Tajik parliament approved a deal for China to invest $57mn in the construction and outfitting of nine border posts that will be staffed by Tajik forces, according to Tajik news outlet Asia-Plus.

China has already constructed 12 Tajik-staffed border posts under a 2016 deal, and operates a military listening post in the far southeastern corner of the country.

“This cooperation didn’t start today,” said Muhammad Shamsuddinov, a Dushanbe-based analyst who writes foreign affairs columns for Asia-Plus and other outlets. “This is the logical extension of what was started back then.”

The new Chinese posts do not indicate China is replacing Russia as a security guarantor for Tajikistan. Russian border troops used to patrol the Afghan-Tajik frontier, but have not done so since 2005, said Melanie Sadozai, a researcher at Germany’s University of Regensburg.

“It’s more a division of labour between China and Russia,” Sadozai told Eurasianet. “China finances security infrastructure, and Russia trains the Tajik army. In each case, it gives both countries an excuse to keep an eye on the border without officially deploying troops.” 

Tajikistan is seeking to engage with all its allies on the border-security issue, Shamsuddinov said, pointing to the 2024 Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation’s (CSTO’s) programme to supply military equipment to Tajikistan’s border forces.

Meanwhile China is acting largely to defend its own national security and investment in Tajikistan rather than seeking to become a security guarantor, he told Eurasianet.

In parallel with the Chinese steps to secure the border, Dushanbe is making moves of its own to build bridges with the Taliban government – and doing so more openly.

When the radical Islamists first returned to power in Afghanistan, President Emomali Rahmon positioned Tajikistan as a staunch opponent, taking in resistance leaders and some refugees.

Since the reopening of border markets in 2023, Tajikistan has quietly shifted its position without going as far as other Central Asian states in building trade ties.

In 2024, a series of low-key visits by security officials offered further hints of the thaw but were unacknowledged by official Dushanbe.

In the wake of last year’s attacks, Tajikistan has further extended a hand to Afghanistan.

Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin spoke about the attacks by phone with the Taliban’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi on December 2 and again on December 28. They were the highest-level contacts between the two governments since the Taliban returned. 

On February 12, Muttaqi received Sadi Sharifi, the Tajik ambassador to Kabul, for the first time.

The Tajiks did not officially comment on the meeting, but the Taliban said that the two sides discussed the border and the expansion of diplomatic ties. Tajikistan is “proceeding based on existing realities, and is seeking to expand relations with Kabul,” Sharifi said, according to Asia-Plus.

Muhriddin gave a press conference on the state of Tajikistan-Taliban ties in early January, another first. He did not make any big announcements, but officially acknowledged Tajik energy exports and expanding trade.

“The question of security on the Tajik-Afghan border remains as before extremely important. With that goal, it goes without saying, that between [security] apparatuses Tajikistan and Afghanistan have set up working contact,” Muhriddin said.

There has been a “very clear warming of [bilateral] relations,” but the border attacks are just an “additional reason” for the detente between Dushanbe and Kabul that has been deepening since 2023, Sadozaï said.

Factors including the other Central Asian states’ business-as-usual approach, pressure from Russia and China and the failure of the National Resistance Front to achieve satisfactory results against the Taliban are the primary drivers of the Rahmon government's increasing openness to its southern neighbor, she said.

“What alternative is there to the Taliban?” Sadozai asked rhetorically.

Alexander Thompson is a journalist based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, reporting on current events across Central Asia. He previously worked for American newspapers, including the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier and The Boston Globe.

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.