- Incidents increase along the 1,350 kilometer border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
- The attacks have killed Chinese guards and workers.
- Tajikistan urges Taliban to curb cross-border militancy.
Tajik officials said Sunday they “neutralized” four “terrorists” who crossed from neighboring Afghanistan in an area where deadly incidents have been increasing in recent weeks, state media reported.
Tajikistan, in Central Asia, shares a mountainous border with Afghanistan and has had tense relations with the Afghan Taliban regime.
According to Tajik security services cited by the state news agency Khovar, “four terrorists were neutralized” after they refused to lay down their weapons in the southern region of Khatlon.
Tajik authorities have reported at least five fatal incidents along the mountainous border, which is about 1,350 kilometers (840 miles) long, since November.
A AFP The count based on official data found that 16 people have been killed in total.
They include Tajik border guards, Chinese workers and what Dushanbe calls “smugglers” and “terrorists.”
After attacks on Chinese nationals in November, Tajik authorities urged the Afghan Taliban regime to take action 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, is openly critical of Afghanistan’s authorities.
He has urged the Taliban to respect the rights of ethnic Tajiks, who are estimated to make up about a quarter of Afghanistan’s population.
But Tajikistan is also taking steps towards cooperation with Kabul, through the supply of electricity, the opening of border markets and meetings between the Taliban and local Tajik officials.
Relations between the two nations were strained after five Chinese nationals were killed and several injured in two separate attacks along Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan in late November and early December.
According to a UN report from December, a militant group, Jamaat Ansarullah, “has fighters spread across different regions of Afghanistan” with the main goal “to destabilize the situation in Tajikistan.”
Dushanbe has previously expressed concern about the presence in Afghanistan of Daesh members in Khorasan.
