Theme - Tajikistan

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 189 (March 11, 2026)

As Russia bleeds in Ukraine and Iran confronts a devastating military campaign by the United States and Israel, Tajikistan — bound to both by history, language, and structural dependency — faces a moment that is as dangerous as it is clarifying. The correct response is not to find a new patron, but to build sovereignty.

The Anatomy of Dependency

Among the Central Asian post-Soviet states, Tajikistan holds the most complex and exposed strategic position. It has the lowest GDP and GDP per capita in the former Soviet space, the smallest defense budget, and ranks 108th of 145 countries in global military strength. Some 93 percent of its territory is mountainous. To the south lies Afghanistan, the source of transnational threats including insurgency, narcotics trafficking, and extremism; to the east, China’s Xinjiang region; to the west, a stronger Uzbekistan; and, until recently, a border with Kyrgyzstan historically marked by territorial clashes. Despite the internal calm established by President Emomali Rahmon following the civil war of 1992–1997, the country has long been regarded as a regional powder keg because of its poverty and susceptibility to the spillover effects of external conflicts. Two of its most consequential external partners — Russia and Iran — are now simultaneously at war, and the tremors from both conflicts reach directly into the economic and security fabric of Tajik society.

The Russia connection is structural and deep-rooted. Russia remains Tajikistan’s primary security partner, providing training, military equipment — accounting for over 60 percent of arms imports — and a large military base on Tajik soil. More consequentially, remittances from Tajik labor migrants in Russia have peaked at approximately 50 percent of GDP, the highest ratio in the world. Over one million Tajik citizens work in Russia in any given year, and more than 90 percent of Tajik foreign workers are Russia-bound. This places Tajikistan’s fiscal and social stability directly in the hands of Moscow’s labor market policies — and of Russian domestic politics.

The Iran connection is of a different character but no less substantial. Tajikistan and Iran share a language, a literary canon, and a cultural memory that seventy years of Soviet rule interrupted but did not erase. Iran was the first state to recognize Tajikistan’s independence in 1991 and the first to open an embassy in Dushanbe. During the 1990s and 2000s, Iranian investment produced landmark infrastructure: the $40 million Istiqlol tunnel and the $260 million Sangtuda-2 hydropower station, which came online in 2011, as well as sustained involvement in the Roghun dam project. Bilateral trade reached approximately $484 million in 2025 — a rise of 28 percent over the previous year, giving Iran a 4.5 percent share of Tajikistan’s total foreign trade. The relationship had been painstakingly rebuilt after a sharp rupture from 2015 to 2021, caused by Iran’s reception of a banned Tajik opposition leader and mutual accusations of interference that left deep institutional mistrust. That rebuilt relationship is now once again in acute distress.

As of early March 2026, both partnerships are under simultaneous strain. Russia is entering what RAND analysts describe as a potential serious recession, with its 2025 budget deficit running five times higher than forecast and energy revenues down roughly a fifth. Iran, meanwhile, has since February 28, 2026, been subjected to a major US-Israeli military campaign targeting its leadership, military infrastructure, and nuclear program, producing immediate disruption to trade, airspace, and the investment pipeline on which Dushanbe was depending. Tajik experts cited in Dushanbe’s leading independent media outlet Asia-Plus predicted a prolonged conflict and warned of both direct and indirect consequences for Tajikistan: through trade, investment flows, fuel prices, and remittances from Russian migrants whose own economy is absorbing a secondary shock from the global energy volatility triggered by the Strait of Hormuz crisis. Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry responded with a call for peaceful resolution through diplomatic means — a formulation of studied neutrality that avoided any attribution of responsibility.

The Illusion of Security

Tajikistan’s security architecture rests on foundations that the Ukraine war has exposed as more fragile than they appeared. Russia’s 201st Military Base — Moscow’s largest outside Russian territory — is operationally thinned, with most troops reportedly redeployed to Ukraine. The Collective Security Treaty Organization CSTO, Russia’s post-Soviet security alliance, has been further discredited: its interventions have served regime-stabilization rather than collective defense, and Moscow’s credibility as a regional security guarantor has been damaged not only by the Ukraine quagmire but by its non-intervention during the Third Karabakh War and the collapse of Syria’s Assad regime. The logic is uncomfortable but unavoidable: a military stretched across a European land war cannot simultaneously commit to guaranteeing security on a 1,357-kilometer frontier facing a Taliban-controlled state.

This is the central paradox of the Russian security relationship: Moscow’s presence is simultaneously a source of stability and a constraint on sovereignty. The base functions as coercive leverage — demonstrated in 2011, when Moscow orchestrated a crackdown on Tajik labor migrants in retaliation for a dispute over base-lease terms. The April 2024 Crocus City Hall attack by Tajik nationals affiliated with ISIS further strained Russo-Tajik relations, fueling anti-Tajik racism in Russia and deportations of migrant workers, straining Tajikistan’s remittance-dependent economy and deepening the global perception of Tajikistan as an incubator of religious extremism. A patron willing to weaponize the economic vulnerabilities of your citizens as a diplomatic instrument, and whose domestic politics produce pogroms against your diaspora, is not a security guarantor in any meaningful sense of the term.

The Iran dimension adds a different layer of institutional fragility. The secular Rahmon government, which governs a majority-Sunni population with stringent restrictions on political Islam, has always held an uncomfortable relationship with an Iranian theocracy whose model of governance represents the antithesis of Dushanbe’s own political theology. The previous rupture in relations — rooted in Iran’s refusal to designate the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan as a terrorist organization, and in compounding financial and political disputes — showed how rapidly civilizational affinity can be overwhelmed by regime interests. The current conflict creates another rupture. Tajik public figures, even those who express solidarity with the Iranian people, are acutely aware that their government cannot afford to antagonize the United States, whose security cooperation is one of the few counterweights to exclusive dependence on Russia and China. The tension between cultural kinship and political self-interest is a permanent feature of Tajikistan’s Iranian policy — and the crisis of March 2026 makes that tension impossible to paper over.

The Chinese Orbit and Its Costs

Into the vacuum created by Russian overextension and Iranian crisis, China has moved with methodical purpose. By 2024, China had become Tajikistan’s primary creditor: external public and publicly guaranteed debt stood at approximately USD 3.1 billion, of which nearly 30 percent is owed to Beijing. China is the second-largest arms supplier nearly 40 percent of imports and has been constructing what satellite imagery suggests is a military base in Tajikistan since 2024, in addition to existing installations monitoring the Taliban and providing counter-terrorism support. While China by 2024 was the largest trading partner of every Central Asian country except Tajikistan — where Russia held that position — that distinction is narrowing rapidly. Chinese corporations also offer Tajikistan higher risk-tolerance for investment in the commodity sector, backed by state funds unavailable to European or Western counterparts.

But substituting Chinese dependency for Russian dependency is not a strategy; it is a rotation of vulnerability. The risks are well-documented: unsustainable debt, perceived loss of national sovereignty, local resentment toward Chinese workers, ecological damage from mining projects, and the bypassing of Tajikistan by major BRI corridors routed through the flatter terrain of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, threatening to reduce Tajikistan’s geopolitical significance rather than enhance it. Public skepticism is rising, fueled by imported Chinese labor, limited local benefits, and debt concerns. Anti-Chinese sentiment is already widespread across the region.

Within multilateral frameworks, China increasingly expects alignment. Beijing condemned the US-Israeli strikes on Iran in the strongest terms and moved to build an opposing front through the SCO and the UN Security Council. Tajikistan, as an SCO member sitting alongside China and Russia, faces institutional pressure to position itself within an anti-Western bloc even when its own strategic interests would benefit from engagement with the West. This structural tension — between what the SCO demands of Dushanbe and what Western partners could offer — is one of the defining constraints on Tajik foreign policy. Both China and Russia, it bears noting, regard President Rahmon as a beacon of stability whose continuity is strategically valuable to them; the alternatives, from their perspective, would be a power vacuum or a democratizing government oriented toward the West. Tajikistan’s leadership is, in this sense, partly a hostage of great-power preferences rather than an agent of its own strategic vision.

A Strategy of Sovereignty: The Road Not Taken

The crises of 2026 constitute not merely a threat but an argument. They demonstrate, with unusual clarity, the cost of structural dependency on authoritarian states. Russia will relocate its military from Tajikistan if operational necessity demands; the Afghan border will be left exposed. Iran will pursue its own ideological agenda regardless of Dushanbe’s interests, and when in crisis will be unable to sustain the investment commitments it made as recently as January 2025. China will extract mineral and strategic concessions calibrated to Beijing’s needs. The case for a different strategic orientation has rarely been stronger.

First, Tajikistan’s geographic position should be converted from vulnerability into asset. Tajikistan sits on the border that matters most to Western security planners: 1,357 kilometers of frontier with Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Afghanistan produces the overwhelming majority of the world’s illicit opiates, and Tajikistan is one of the primary transit routes for narcotics moving toward Russia, Europe, and beyond. The narcotics interdiction argument is a systematically underutilized instrument of Western engagement. Western governments have enduring institutional interest in disrupting this supply chain. Dushanbe has the leverage of geography: it controls the most direct land corridor between Afghanistan’s poppy-growing regions and Eurasian markets. A sustained security partnership built around border management, intelligence sharing, and interdiction capacity — framed as a frontline contribution to a shared Western priority — would create the kind of durable institutional relationship that could, over time, reduce dependence on Russian military guarantees without a disruptive formal break.

Second, Tajikistan’s mineral wealth represents a strategic asset that its current partners have systematically undervalued. It is the world’s second-largest producer of antimony — a metalloid used in flame retardants, semiconductors, and the hardening of ammunition — mining around 21,000 tonnes annually, most of which is sold to Russia and China. For decades the dominant global supplier was China, which accounts for roughly half of world production; in 2024, Beijing banned antimony exports to the United States and Europe, leaving Western defense planners scrambling for alternatives. The country also holds deposits of lithium, niobium, and tantalum — materials essential to battery technology and electronics — alongside reportedly one of the world’s largest silver deposits and significant reserves of gold, tungsten, and uranium. Much of this wealth was never fully surveyed after the Soviet collapse. Western interest, long absent, is now arriving.

Third, Tajikistan holds the eighth-largest hydropower potential in the world — 527 billion kWh annually — of which less than five percent has been developed. Its theoretical capacity is three times the current electricity consumption of all Central Asia combined. Rogun, when complete, will be the world’s tallest rockfill dam and the largest power plant in the region. Western multilateral institutions are already financing pieces of this architecture — the World Bank, the EBRD, and the EU among them. These are not charitable gestures; they reflect a structural Western interest in Central Asian energy independence that Dushanbe has been too passive in exploiting.

That passivity extends to the regional level. Tajikistan generates over 80% of the Amu Darya’s flow — the river on which downstream Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan depend for irrigation and survival. Water management, electricity trade, and critical minerals are the substance of any serious Central Asian collective framework.

Fourth, a more promising regional architecture is emerging to establish this collective framework: the resolution of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border dispute in March 2025 — achieved without Russian mediation — points in this direction. Tajikistan should invest in the C5+1 format with the United States and in Central Asian institutions not led by Russia, building collective economic and security frameworks that distribute risk and dilute the leverage of any single external power. Tajikistan has recently reached agreement with London on cooperation on critical minerals, and the CA5+UK ministerial track was launched in the same week as the Iran conflict escalated. These openings should be developed with urgency, not treated as minor diplomatic footnotes. A Central Asia that coordinates on border security, water management, critical minerals, and trade facilitation is a Central Asia with a stronger hand vis-à-vis Beijing, Moscow, and any other outside power. The BISI analysis from July 2025 noted that Tajikistan holds a unique position as the only country hosting Russian, Chinese, and Indian military facilities simultaneously — a fact that, properly leveraged, could give Dushanbe far more room for maneuver than its poverty and size would otherwise allow. India in particular, whose presence at Farkhor Air Base represents the only non-Chinese, non-Russian military foothold, and whose strategic interest in countering both Pakistani and Taliban influence aligns with Tajikistan’s own security needs, is an underutilized partner that Dushanbe could court more deliberately.

Fifth, the Persian civilizational heritage — shared with an Iran that will, in whatever form, eventually emerge from its current crisis — is a genuine soft-power asset that need not be held hostage to the Islamic Republic’s political fortunes. Whatever government eventually emerges in Tehran, the literary and cultural connection with Tajikistan will endure: the common language, the shared canon, the centuries of intertwined intellectual and artistic life. Tajikistan is uniquely positioned to present itself as the guardian of Persian literary civilization within the post-Soviet space — a role that resonates with the Iranian diaspora worldwide, with Western academic and cultural institutions, and with the many Iranians who distinguish sharply between love of Persian culture and attachment to the Islamic Republic. This identity is a diplomatic resource that should be deployed as one.

The structural dependencies that define Tajikistan’s current position are real, and no responsible analysis should minimize the difficulty of changing them. Remittances cannot be redirected overnight. Military agreements cannot be dissolved by diplomatic communiqué. Trade patterns shift over years. The World Bank already projected Tajikistan’s GDP growth moderating sharply through 2027 — and that projection was made before the Iran conflict, which will accelerate the downside risks. But the window for genuine strategic reorientation is open in a way it has rarely been. Russia’s reliability is visibly degrading. Iran’s capacity is severely disrupted. Chinese dependency carries documented long-term costs. The crises of 2026 have, paradoxically, created the conditions for a clarity of purpose that Dushanbe has rarely been forced to articulate.

Tajikistan is too small to dictate its fate, and too strategic to be ignored. That paradox can be a trap or an opportunity, depending on whether Dushanbe chooses to remain a passive object of great-power competition or to become an active architect of its own strategic relationships. If its destiny is to seek external partners, it should choose partners whose interests include its development rather than merely its compliance, and whose political culture does not treat the livelihoods of its citizens as a diplomatic bargaining chip. The question is whether Tajikistan’s leadership possesses the strategic imagination, and the political courage, to walk through the door that history has now opened.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 101 (Nov 29, 2024)

Recent events in the UAE and Central Asia show that Iran is again boosting recruitment of individuals from former Soviet republics for various purposes, including terrorist attacks and intelligence-gathering activities. Tehran plans to use these individuals directly against Israeli “targets” this time. The abduction and murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan by three Uzbek terrorists is the most recent case. Despite the lack of public disclosure of definitive evidence linking this attack to Iran, experts point to several factors that support this conclusion.

The Modus Operandi is consistent with Iranian tactics:

• The circumstances surrounding Rabbi Kogan’s murder align with methods previously attributed to Iranian operations, such as targeting individuals abroad through criminal proxies.

• The incident occurred amid heightened tensions between Israel and Iran, with Iran historically opposing normalization efforts between Israel and Arab states, with an emphasis on the Persian Gulf emirates.

• While direct ties of the apprehended perpetrators to Iran have not been confirmed, the use of foreign nationals in such operations is known to be a trademark tactic of the IRGC. One might think to first look into the Muslim denomination these terrorist operatives are a part of, however, no concrete evidence has surfaced to link them with Shia Islam – the primary religion in Iran.

ISIS might have carried out the attack, but it is well known that this organization consistently takes responsibility for the sake of clout, while Iran consistently refutes any involvement in such actions. Besides, the MO of the attack is different from those preferred by ISIS, which focus less on individual clandestine assassinations and more on mass casualty attacks. 

Tajiks are known to be the IRGC’s primary recruiting pool; however, what about the Uzbeks?

Let’s examine previous cases in more detail. From December 2023 till January 2024, there were a series of failed attempts to attack Jewish Agency offices and the Ohr Avner Jewish Center in Almaty (Kazakhstan), an arson attempt on a farm belonging to the Israeli Saxovat Broyler Co. in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), and smaller events following the same pattern. 

In August 2024, it became known that the organization behind these attempts was the IRGC-controlled Iraqi militia, Kata’ib Hezbollah (Hezbollah Brigades). The main coordinator, according to several sources, was Tajik operative Muhammad Ali Burhanov, also known as Sayed Hamid al-Tajiki.

According to the GFATF (Global Fight Against Terrorism Funding), Burhanov was recruited while studying at Al-Mustafa University in Iran—a known recruitment center for Tehran-backed militant groups, which is operating under the Islamic Propaganda Bureau of the Qom Seminary. The IRGC Qods Force’s Department 400 coordinates Burhanov’s activities. His handlers are Hossein Rahmani and Hossein Rahban, who are behind other attempts to murder Israelis abroad. For example, a November 2022 case in Georgia, where agents of the IRGC tried to kill a prominent Israeli businessman. 

According to The Washington Institute,  Qods Force’s Department 400 sometimes collaborates with ISIS and the Taliban despite deep-seated sectarian differences and opposing objectives.

It is crucial to remember that such sectarian differences as Sunni vs Shia Islam have not stopped the IRGC and Qods force from supporting Sunni terrorist groups before, as is the case with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

This brings us back to the recent murder of Rabbi Kogan in the UAE, where three Uzbek nationals were involved. Previously there were no cases of IRGC recruiting Uzbeks—Iranians prefer Tajik Shias. Tajikistan’s population shares linguistic and cultural ties with Iran, as both are Persian-speaking nations. Since 2013, the IRGC has enlisted Tajiks to fight in Syria alongside pro-Assad forces. They were instrumental in key battles, including the recapture of Aleppo, under the command of Iranian military advisors.

By recruiting Tajiks, Iran aims to extend its influence into Central Asia, countering the presence of other regional powers and promoting its ideological and political interests. Furthermore, the emergence of ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), also known as the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), in Afghanistan and its recruitment of Central Asians, including Tajiks and Balochis, presents a significant threat to Iran. By recruiting Tajik Shia fighters, Iran seeks to counterbalance Sunni groups.

Interestingly enough, ISIS-Khorasan is actively recruiting Uzbeks to fight in Afghanistan. Reports indicate that ISKP has deliberately expanded its social media efforts in the Uzbek language.

As previously mentioned, the relationship between ISKP and Iran is hostile. In January 2024, ISKP claimed responsibility for twin bombings in the Iranian city of Kerman, Iran, during a ceremony commemorating Qasem Soleimani, resulting in nearly 100 fatalities. In August 2024, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry announced the detention of 14 ISKP members, alleging their involvement in planning attacks within the country. 

It is difficult to imagine that the IRGC and ISKP have found common ground. However, taking into account the above-mentioned Qods Force’s Department 400 ties to ISIS and desperate need for any retaliatory action against Israel (considering the failed attacks in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan), there is the probability of a joint operation aimed to murder a prominent Israeli citizen. ISIS may have “loaned” its operatives or provided a “blessing” for the use of Uzbeks.

Another possibility exists, one that carries even greater risk. There is a chance that IRGC emissaries have found a way to recruit representatives of a tiny (between 200,000 and 300,000) Uzbek Shia minority living in Bukhara and Samarkand. Their existence is hardly common knowledge in the Arab world and in the West, as they are primarily comprised of descendants of ethnic Iranians, who live there for 2-3 hundred years. Uzbek extremists, being associated with Sunni groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, are much less visible and identifiable as IRGC agents and thus constitute a larger threat.

The history of the IRGC’s recruiting of the citizens of the FSU countries:

The IRGC has reportedly engaged criminal gangs from former Soviet regions for operations abroad, including espionage and violent acts. This strategy leverages existing criminal networks to conduct activities that further Iran’s strategic interests while maintaining plausible deniability. As was mentioned above, Tajikistan and ethnic Tajiks are the major recruiting pools for Iranian proxy militias. Yet they are not the only source of operatives that share cultural and ideological affinity with Iranians. 

Conversely, Azerbaijan is one of the most frequent locations where the IRGC attempts to carry out terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets. The highly experienced local national security service DTX foils the vast majority of such plots.

In 2004, 2007, 2012, 2017, and 2022, DTX neutralized and apprehended several mixed groups of terrorists, comprising both local and foreign citizens (Lebanese and Afghans, for example). Iran trained most of them to gather intelligence and carry out attacks on Israeli and, occasionally, other Western embassies.

It should be mentioned that the IRGC has its own proxy organization for spreading khomeinist ideology inside Azerbaijan, Hussainiyoun. This organization aims to destabilize the government of Azerbaijan per the mission given to it by Tehran. If and when the opportunity presents itself, Husayniyun operatives emphasize their opposition to Azerbaijani ties with Israel through incitement of local unrest. It is no mere coincidence that the leader of Husayniyun, Tawhid Ibrahim Begli, started his organization in Qom, a known recruitment center for these types of groups, as previously presented. The organization was even named by Qassem Soleimani himself.

In March 2023, an Iranian agent tried to murder Azerbaijani MP Fazil Mustafa, known for his staunch support for strengthening relations with Israel.

An Afghan citizen received a 10-year sentence in October 2024 for his attempt to attack the Israeli embassy in Baku in July 2023. He had several local accomplices, recruited by the IRGC, who were also apprehended.

In October 2021, Cypriot authorities arrested a dual Russian-Azerbaijani national suspected of planning attacks on Israeli businessmen in Cyprus. He was using a Russian passport to operate from Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus as an operational and transit area.

In November 2022, Georgian security services thwarted an IRGC plot to assassinate an Israeli businessman in Tbilisi. A hitman of Pakistani origin had a support team of several persons with dual Iranian-Georgian citizenship, who provided him with weapons and transportation. 

The IRGC primarily seeks to enlist kindred Shia Muslims to act out its bidding across the globe, yet occasionally even cooperates with Sunni groups, as long as their geopolitical goals surpass the cultural and religious differences. However, there have been cases where non-Muslims and non-Islamic entities have served other purposes. For instance, money laundering, sanction evasion, and the supply of dual-use materials have involved several Armenian businessmen and companies, including banks.

All this demonstrates how much influence and free reign the tentacles of Tehran have throughout the southern hemisphere of the post-Soviet world, especially now, when there is no longer the same level of Russian influence to stave off the propagation of extremist, fundamentalist, and Islamic ideas.