Tajikistan is seeking Russia’s help in containing raids by Islamic militants operating out of Afghanistan. Two attacks within the past week have left five Chinese nationals working on road construction and gold mining projects in Tajik border areas dead.

Reuters reported on December 2 that Tajik officials were negotiating with their Russian counterparts on mounting joint patrols along the almost 850-mile-long (1,368-kilometre-long) frontier with Afghanistan. Moscow maintains military facilities housing thousands of troops in and around Dushanbe, the Tajik capital. Both countries are members of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). The Russian lease on its military facilities in Tajikistan runs until 2042.

During a visit to Tajikistan in October, Russian leader Vladimir Putin indicated he was eager to bolster security cooperation with Tajikistan, describing the Dushanbe troop contingent as a “guarantor of security for both the republic and the wider region.”   

The trouble along the border began on November 26, when Islamic militants in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province launched a drone attack on a Chinese gold mining workers’ camp in Tajikistan’s southwestern Khatlon Region, according to Tajik officials. Three workers were killed and one wounded, said a statement issued by the Chinese embassy in Dushanbe. 

Condemning the raid as a “grave criminal act,” the embassy urged all Chinese nationals working in border areas to leave the vicinity as quickly as possible. Chinese diplomats in Afghanistan likewise called on Chinese workers at gold mines in northern Afghanistan to evacuate.

On November 30, a similar cross-border attack occurred in Tajikistan’s eastern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), leaving two Chinese workers dead and another two wounded.

Following the second attack, Tajik leader Emomali Rahmon summoned an emergency meeting of his national security team, issuing instructions to “prevent the recurrence of such unfortunate incidents.” The State Security Service, meanwhile, lashed out at Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership, calling on authorities in Kabul to stop the militant strikes and ensure the “arrest of persons involved in these monstrous attacks.”

The security services statement went on to acknowledge that “at present, the situation is not stable at the state border.”    

Taliban officials denied any connection to the attacks. Afghanistan’s Tolo news agency, citing a Taliban Foreign Ministry representative, attributed the incidents to radical “elements seeking to create chaos, instability, and distrust among countries in the region.”  

Taliban Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi sought to reassure his Tajik counterpart, Sirojiddin Muhriddin, during a teleconference December 2 that Kabul would “engage in all forms of coordination” with Dushanbe, calling “joint action against hostile elements a timely necessity.”

Also on December 2, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called for stepped-up engagement with the Taliban, which Russia, as the only country to have made the move so far, recognised as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan in July. “It is an important country in the region,” the official TASS news agency quoted Peskov as saying.

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.