Tajikistan refutes allegations of Chinese military facility near Afghan border

Tajikistan's Deputy Interior Minister Abdurahmon Alamshozoda has said that reports of a planned base for Tajikistan's security forces in the Mountain Badakhshan Autonomous Region with Chinese involvement are false.

Alamshozoda dismissed the rumours at a press conference, Caliber.Az reports citing the Russian media.

"The claim that China is building a base or centre in the Ishkoshim district or anywhere else in Mountain Badakhshan Autonomous Region is entirely false. We are not constructing any facility," he noted.

Reports about the construction of a base in Tajikistan's Mountain Badakhshan Autonomous Region have circulated several times in the media, but specifics about its intended use were not clearly mentioned. In October 2021, Reuters reported, citing a Tajik MP, that Dushanbe and Beijing had reached an agreement for China to build a base in Tajikistan near the Afghan border in Mountain Badakhshan Autonomous Region.

According to Bloomberg, the base's construction was to be funded by China's Ministry of Public Security and later transferred to Tajikistan's Interior Ministry. At that time, China's Foreign Ministry stated that the country did not possess any military base in Central Asia.

In July 2024, UK’s The Daily Telegraph reported on the construction of a Chinese military base in Tajikistan near the Afghan border. Both the Chinese and Tajik foreign ministries denied these claims. Tajikistan's Foreign Ministry clarified that this issue was neither on the agenda nor a part of the bilateral relations between Dushanbe and Beijing.