Crossroads Asia | Security | Central Asia

Months After Attacks, Chinese Work Resumes on the Dushanbe-Kulma Highway

Chinese workers have reportedly resumed construction on a critical highway along the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border where two such workers were killed in November 2025.

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........

© The Diplomat