What’s Behind China’s Trouble on the Afghanistan-Tajikistan Border? |
In late November 2025, over the span of four days, there were two separate cross-border attacks targeting Chinese workers in Tajikistan near the Afghan border. At least five Chinese nationals were killed, according to government and media reports.
Chinese workers have been targeted in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area and in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province – but the borders with Central Asia have not been the sites of such attacks until recently. In the following interview, Edward Lemon – president of the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs and a research assistant professor at The Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, Washington D.C. – lays out what is known about the recent attacks, how they fit into Tajikistan’s difficult relationship with the Taliban in Afghanistan and China’s hesitance to become too deeply involved in the region’s security, even as its interests grow.
What sets the recent attacks on Chinese workers in the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border area apart from previous attacks on Chinese interests in the wider South and Central Asian region?
This is the second set of incidents in Tajikistan within the space of a year in which Chinese citizens have been killed on the Tajik side of the border. Last year’s incident (in the same district along the Tajik-Afghan border as the November 25, 2025 incident) was the first time a Chinese citizen was killed in Tajikistan. The November 25 incident was the deadlier of the two, with three killed.
While in the 2024 incident it was unclear that the Chinese citizens were the target,........