Tajik-Taliban Relations Slowly Warm, But Both Sides Hedge Their Bets

Talk about mixed signals.

At the beginning of May, a prominent critic of Emomali Rahmon’s government in Tajikistan, Sharofiddin Gadoev, gave an interview to the Afghan television channel TOLOnews tearing into the 72-year-old strongman.

Days later, the Taliban’s chief spokesman issued a upbeat assessment of bilateral ties, praising the “positive relations” between Dushanbe and Kabul and pledging cooperation.

The contrasting comments illustrate the cautious, sometimes contradictory stances staked out by officials from both Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Even so, a warming trend is observable between the two neighbors, countries that share a rugged 1,374-kilometer-long border.

Among the positive signs are a series of public statements from Taliban officials heralding cooperation with Tajikistan, as well as a visit to Kabul by a Tajik delegation in the late summer that was publicly announced by the Taliban.

“What’s really improved is that bilateral meetings are made public. The big game changer is also the fact that [Tajik] authorities have stopped releasing offensive statements about the Taliban,” said Mélanie Sadozaï, a researcher at Germany’s University of Regensburg who has extensively studied the Afghan-Tajik border.

But it is not as if relations between the pair are smooth sailing. They remain relatively chilly compared to other Central Asian states, like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which wasted little time in normalizing relations and cutting deals with the Islamic emirate.

Tajikistan still considers the Taliban an extremist group and harbors Taliban opponents, while the Taliban regime continues to shelter members of a Tajik extremist group, Jamaat Ansarullah, and flirt with leaders of the Tajik opposition.

Rahmon’s distrust of the Taliban stems from the earliest days of the group’s existence in the 1990s, a time when Tajikistan was embroiled in a civil war pitting forces loyal to his leadership against the United Tajik Opposition, a grouping led by the Islamic Renaissance Party. Since then, Rahmon has worried about the possibility of the Taliban destabilizing his regime.

When the Taliban returned to power in 2021, Rahmon’s government adopted a defensive posture, bolstering border troops. In response, the Taliban emboldened Jamaat Ansarullah fighters.

Relations began to thaw in September of 2023 when Tajikistan allowed the reopening of cross-border markets, which required cooperation by border guards from both countries, Sadozaï wrote in an email response to questions posed by Eurasianet.

Over the past year, there have been more positive signals. Last summer, a high-level Taliban delegation visited Dushanbe, and in late August, Saimumin Yatimov, the head of Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security, and the former Tajik ambassador to Afghanistan, visited Kabul, according to RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, Radio Ozodi.

In subsequent months, multiple Taliban officials made positive statements about the relationship.

“Our political relations with Tajikistan are improving, and there have been noticeable differences compared to the past. Their delegation came here, and our delegation went there, and God willing, these exchanges will increase,” the Taliban’s then-deputy prime minister, Abdul Kabir, said in October, TOLOnews reported.

Tajikistan is maintaining a delicate balance with the Taliban. On one side, Dushanbe is developing economic links with Afghanistan, none more important than the electricity dealsthat have seen Tajikistan export increasing amounts of power southward in recent years. On the other side rest political considerations. Tajik officials still style Dushanbe as the defender of the interests of ethnically Tajik Afghans, who comprise roughly a quarter of Afghanistan’s population. They also dance around the issue of recognizing Taliban control of Afghanistan.

“It’s very paradoxical … ‘We deny your existence, but it’s business as usual,’” Sadozaï said. “They [Tajik officials] have to engage with the Taliban for security and economic purposes, but they also have to be consistent with their political stance, which is supporting the resistance.”

Gadoev’s early May visit to Kabul shows that the Taliban too are walking a fine line.

As the Amsterdam-based head of the Reforms and Development in Tajikistan movement, Gadoev announced an initiative in April to form an anti-Rahmon government-in-exile. He could not have set foot in Afghanistan without the permission of top Taliban leaders. In Kabul, he met with representatives of local groups and cultural organizations with the ostensible goal of furthering cooperation between the two countries, the RFE/RL television channel Current Time reported.

His comments during the televised interview were “extremely harsh” toward Rahmon, Sadozaï said. Gadoev called Rahmon a “dictator” who runs his government like a “mafia.”

Sadozaï suggested that the Taliban might be hedging Afghan relations with Tajikistan by engaging with Gadoev. “If Gadoev embodies a potential successor of Rahmon, investing in him is quite a wise move,” Sadozaï said. “[By] letting Gadoev enter Afghanistan, the Taliban really don’t risk alienating their relations with the current regime in Tajikistan because they do have some leverage.”

The Tajik government has not commented publicly on any of the recent developments.

Looking forward, outside factors may place limits on the development of Afghan-Tajik ties. For one, the Trump administration’s decision to cut remaining aid to Afghanistan will hinder the Taliban’s ability to pay for Tajik electricity. At the same time, Dushanbe may worry about jeopardizing the security assistance it gets from the West, if Tajik officials are perceived as cozying up to the Taliban.

The next steps in improving the relationship could include an expansion of trade and loosening entry requirements for Afghans traveling to Tajikistan. The best-case scenario over the near term would be for Dushanbe to resume projects that were suspended in 2021 and continue meetings with Taliban leaders, Sadozaï said.

As to formal recognition from the current Tajik regime, “I highly doubt this will ever happen,” she said.