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.”
