0:00 Somewhat unsurprisingly, the Taliban don't get on great with their neighbors. In 2023, a long-running dispute over the Helmond River nearly escalated into a full-on war with Iran. In 2024, border clashes broke out along the border with Pakistan that continue to this day. And throughout 2025, there were escalating tensions between Afghanistan and its Central Asian neighbors over the Taliban's various dam and canal projects, which threatened to reduce regional water supplies. To top it all off, in the past couple of months, yet another border conflict seems to be breaking out. This time with Tajjikstan. So, in this video, we're going to take a look at the recent clashes along the Tajjik Afghan border. How they fit into a longer history of antipathy between the Tajik government and the Taliban, and why things don't look likely to get
0:45 better anytime soon. Never miss an episode and always feel in the loop by subscribing and ringing the bell. So let's start with a bit of context because tensions between Tajjikstan and Afghanistan are really nothing new. A good place to start is probably the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, which paved the way for the emergence of an independent Tajjikiststan, previously the Tajjik SSR, but also led to the collapse of the incumbent People's Democratic Party or PDPA government in Afghanistan. For context, the PDPA were a Marxist Lenist outfit that were essentially propped up by the Soviets. As part of the Soviet Afghan war throughout the 1980s, the PDPA and the
1:32 Soviets fought against various Islamist groups in Afghanistan known as the Mujahedin. Despite receiving substantial support from a number of the Soviet Union's cold war adversaries, including the US and UK, the Mujahedin were unable to ou the PDPA when they were supported by the Soviets. However, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the PDPA promptly folded and were chased out of Kabul in 1992. The consequent power vacuum gave way to a brutal civil war in Afghanistan with various different Mujahedin groups vying for power which only really cooled down in 1996 when the Taliban emerged as the dominant force. Anyway, at almost exactly the same time, Tajjikstan was engulfed in its own civil war which ran from 1992 until 1997,
2:19 a bit longer than the Afghan civil war. This is a massive simplification, but the TLDDR is that the war was fought between old Soviet elites trying to hold on to power versus a mishmash of opposition groups under an umbrella organization called the United Tajik Opposition or UTO. The UTO included liberals and democratic reformers, but was really dominated by a Tajjik Islamist party called the Islamic Renaissance Party or IRP, who was supported by the Taliban and other Afghan mujahedim. Unsurprisingly, this meant that the Tajjik government, who ultimately defeated the UTO, have never really got on with the Taliban. The Tajjik government was thus pretty happy when the Taliban were ousted by US forces in 2001 and replaced by a new
3:04 government led by Hamemed Kazay who was head of state in Afghanistan from 2001 until the US's withdrawal in 2021. Kazzi got on well with Tajjikstan's president Emma Ali Rakman who was in power at the same time. Rakman, a former Soviet soldier, had actually been in power for over 30 years. He was first elected president way back in 1994, but since consolidated power and remains in post to this day, which is why Zajikstan is widely considered an autocracy, even though it does hold regular elections. Anyway, you get the idea. Brahman has never really liked the Taliban and has been around long enough to remember what they were like in the '90s. As you can imagine, he was thus not all too happy when the Taliban returned to power after America's chaotic withdrawal in 2021.
3:51 Since then, there have been persistent tensions between Tajjikhstan and Afghanistan. Rahman accuses the Taliban of supporting Islamist terror groups in Tajjikhstan, including perhaps most notably Yakmat and Serula, who are also known as the Tajjikstani Taliban. Well, for their part, the Taliban accused Rakman of supporting the National Resistance Front or NRF, an anti-Taliban group formed in 2021 that exercised de facto control over the Panchia Valley, the only bit of Afghanistan that the Taliban didn't control for a couple of months after the fall of Kabul. When the Taliban took over the Panchia Valley, the NRF's leadership fled to Tajjikstan, where they've continued to organize occasional attacks against the Taliban. Nonetheless, there was a moment last year when it looked like relations might finally be improving. There were a
4:37 number of highle meetings that apparently went pretty well, including a well attended bilateral in Kabul last November. This apparent reproach month was partly motivated by pragmatism. Like many of Afghanistan's other neighbors, Tajjikstan has reluctantly come to accept that the Taliban weren't going anywhere. So it was probably worth at least opening dialogue, not least because some 10 million or so ethnic Tajjiks, roughly equivalent to Jikstan's entire population live under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. But it was also because a greater threat than the Taliban had emerged, namely the Islamic State Korusan or ISIS K. For context, ISIS K are an ISIS offshoot that has been traditionally based in the Afghan Pakistan border regions, but were able to expand operations after the Taliban
5:22 returned in 2021, culminating in a missile attack against Tajjikstan in mid 2022. And Tajjikstan apparently decided that if they had to choose between ISIS K and the Taliban, the Taliban were the lesser of two evils and they'd need to cooperate for any chance at stamping out ISIS K. However, in the months since, relations have once again cratered, largely thanks to a series of skirmishes along the border. This all really kicked off in late November when three Chinese nationals working in Tajikhstan were killed by a drone launched from inside Afghanistan with two more Chinese nationals killed in a shootout a few days later. This didn't go down too well in Tajjikstan, especially because it put strain on Tajjikhstan's relations with China, which is Tajjikhstan's largest foreign investor and trading partner.
6:09 This was then followed by three further skirmishes in December which led to the deaths of about 15 people and then another two skirmishes in January with the latest only coming to an end last week. Now, we should say that the Taliban insists that they're not responsible for these attacks and have instead blamed ISIS K and Yamat and Salura. However, this has put renewed strain on Afghan Tajik relations with Tajik authorities accusing the Taliban of not doing enough to secure its border areas. And this looks a lot like the situation we saw on Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, which saw reoccurring skirmishes throughout 2024 and 2025. Again, the Taliban claimed that they had nothing to do with them. Instead, blaming other terror groups like the Balac Liberation Army and the Pakistani Taliban. But Pakistan basically said
6:56 that this wasn't good enough and ultimately launched air strikes on Taliban positions in Kabul and Kandahar. Essentially implying that Pakistan would hold the Taliban responsible for any terror attacks originating inside Afghanistan even if they were carried out by other groups. And this bodess ill for Afghanistan Tajjikhstan relations going forward. If the Taliban were unable or unwilling to secure their border with Pakistan, it's hard to see how or why they do a better job on their border with Tajjikstan. Now this is a big story and amongst every other big story happening right now you might be feeling powerless in the current climate. The problems feel massive and individual actions can feel meaningless. But what if we told you that you can be part of something bigger? Something that actually turns concern into action.
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