Work has reportedly resumed on a critical highway project linking Tajikistan with China, months after Chinese employees of the China Road and Bridge Corporation were killed in the area in an armed attack.

The Dushanbe-Kulma highway connects the Tajik capital to China via Khorog, the capital of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), and the Kulma Pass border crossing. In 2022 – not long after the central Tajik government put down yet another round of unrest in GBAO –  the Tajik Transportation Ministry announced that China Road and Bridge Corporation would undertake a project to rehabilitate the road.

In late November 2025, five Chinese workers were killed in two separate attacks near the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border. Three Chinese citizens were killed in an attack that targeted a gold-mining company compound on November 26 in Shamsiddin Shohin district in Khatlon Region. Four days later, on November 30,  two more Chinese workers – employees of China Road and Bridge Corporation – were killed in Shodak village in GBAO’s Darvoz district. Both attacks took place close to the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border.

After the second attack, Chinese Ambassador to Tajikistan Guo Zhijun “demanded that Tajikistan take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of Chinese enterprises and citizens in Tajikistan.”

In a WeChat message, the embassy urged Chinese business and citizens to evacuate from the border areas. 

With the Chinese specialists gone, work ground to a halt on the tricky Qal’ai Khumb-Vanj portion of the larger Dushanbe-Kulma highway, which stretches between Darvoz district, where the November 30 attack occurred, and neighboring Rushan district.

In March 2026, Tajikistan’s parliament approved a Chinese-funded project to construct nine border facilities along the country’s frontier with Afghanistan, with a grant of 569 million somoni – approximately $61 million.

And now work on the highway is apparently underway once more. Citing the transportation ministry, RFE/RL’s Tajik service, Ozodi, reported that Chinese workers are back on the job after Dushanbe adopted additional security measures. 

According to the ministry, “after taking the necessary measures to ensure the safety of Chinese workers in cooperation with relevant agencies, Chinese workers have returned to the facility and the remaining work is currently underway.”

Tajik officials, in their comments to Ozodi, acknowledged additional security measures without being specific. But an RFE/RL reporter witnessed Chinese employees being guarded by Tajik special forces in late May.

Chinese workers, typically engaged in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure projects, have been targeted in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area and in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province – but the borders with Central Asia have not been the sites of such attacks until recently. In mid-November 2024, Chinese workers were attacked for the first time in Tajikistan – in the same district where the first of the November 2025 attacks occurred. 

In the wake of 2025 attacks, the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan claimed to have opened an investigation. They also claimed to have arrested two individuals in connection with the attacks, which were both reported to have originated in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province. No specific groups claimed responsibility, though Tajik authorities suggested that criminal groups and drug smugglers were to blame; Taliban officials suggested that unnamed groups wishing to damage the Afghanistan-Tajikistan relationship were behind the attacks.

In the months since, there has been no update on the Taliban’s investigation but in January, RFE/RL cited two separate Tajik border officials in GBAO’s Khatlon Province as saying that the Shamsiddin Shohin district attack, targeting the gold mining company, stemmed from water disputes. Further details on the attack targeting the road workers have not been made available.