- Incidents are rising along the 1,350-kilometer Tajik-Afghan border.
- Attacks have killed guards, Chinese workers.
- Tajikistan urges Taliban to curb cross-border militancy.
Tajikistan officials said Sunday they “neutralized” four “terrorists” who crossed over from neighboring Afghanistan into an area where deadly incidents have been on the rise in recent weeks, state media reported.
Tajikistan in Central Asia shares a mountainous border with Afghanistan and has had a tense relationship with the Afghan Taliban regime.
According to Tajik security services, cited by the state-owned Khovar news agency, “four terrorists were neutralized” after they refused to lay down their weapons in the southern Khatlon region.
Tajik authorities have reported at least five fatal incidents on the mountainous border, which is about 1,350 kilometers (840 miles) long, since November.
An AFP count using official data showed that 16 people have been killed in total.
These include Tajik border guards, Chinese laborers and what Dushanbe calls “smugglers” and “terrorists”.
After attacks on Chinese nationals in November, Tajik authorities called on the Afghan Taliban regime to take measures to prevent destabilization of the volatile border region, where drug traffickers and militant groups are active.
Unlike other Central Asian leaders who are strengthening ties with the Taliban, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon – in power since 1992 – openly criticizes Afghanistan’s authorities.
He has called on the Taliban to respect the rights of ethnic Tajiks, who are estimated to represent about a quarter of Afghanistan’s population.
But Tajikistan is also taking steps toward cooperation with Kabul through electricity supplies, opening of border markets and meetings between the Taliban and local Tajik officials.
Relations between the two nations were hit after five Chinese nationals were killed and several wounded in two separate attacks along Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan in late November and early December.
According to a UN report in December, a militant group, Jamaat Ansarullah, has “fighters spread across different regions of Afghanistan” with a primary goal “to destabilize the situation in Tajikistan.”
Dushanbe has previously expressed concern over the presence in Afghanistan of members of Daesh in Khorasan.
