In the evolving matrix of regional security threats, few developments are as troubling as the quiet reemergence of Tajikistan as a key recruitment ground for Daesh militants. Despite its posturing as a bulwark against extremism, the Tajik government appears to be enabling if not orchestrating a new phase of ideological militancy, one that now thrives less in the mountains and more in cyberspace.
The paradox is jarring. Tajikistan, which brands itself as a defender of Islamic identity, has systematically eroded Islamic public life within its own borders. From banning Islamic dress and religious education to surveilling clerics and shuttering mosques, the regime’s crackdown on Islamic expression has been among the harshest in Central Asia. Yet, at the same time, Tajik nationals are disproportionately represented among Daesh operatives captured or killed in Afghanistan, raising uncomfortable questions about the state’s role in radicalisation and recruitment.
While militants are tightly restricted from operating within Tajik territory, many of them conveniently find their way across borders particularly into Afghanistan where their presence serves to destabilise a region struggling to recover from decades of war. These cross-border flows, enabled by networks of ideological grooming and logistical facilitation, suggest far more than mere negligence. They reflect a strategic pattern one that benefits actors invested in prolonging insecurity under the guise of fighting terrorism.
Following the Islamic Emirate’s successful campaign against Daesh in Afghanistan, which led to the elimination or arrest of several high-ranking insurgents, the terror group has been forced to re calibrate. The battlefield has changed—and so have the tactics. In place of guns and strongholds, Daesh is now leveraging pixels and posts, shifting its campaign to social media in an attempt to recruit disillusioned youth.
In this context, a recent move by President Emomali Rahmon’s government deserves critical attention. A new law, quietly enacted, decriminalises social media interaction with so-called “extremist” or “terrorist” content. This comes after years of severe repression in which more than 1,500 citizens were jailed for simply liking or commenting on flagged posts many enduring long sentences for what amounted to digital misdemeanours.
For a regime known for its zero-tolerance policy toward religious expression and dissent, this sudden shift is anything but innocuous. The timing, substance, and broader geopolitical context suggest a more calculated intent. By loosening digital restrictions, the Tajik government is not liberalising; it is re purposing the online sphere as a quiet funnel for extremist indoctrination.
This is not a baseless assumption. It aligns with mounting evidence of Tajik individuals being recruited online, groomed in isolation, and dispatched across the border with ideological fervour and operational directives. The digital theatre has become the new front line, and the absence of regulation in this space is not an oversight it is a strategic opening.
Tajikistan’s pivot toward softening online surveillance, then, cannot be viewed in isolation. It must be seen as part of a broader, more insidious pattern one where a state, unable to project ideological control at home, chooses instead to export its radicals to neighbouring territories. In doing so, it plays into the hands of global actors who have long manipulated extremist proxies for geopolitical gain.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has managed to degrade Daesh’s operational capacity on the ground. However, the challenge now is ideological, and it is digital. If unchecked, the combination of state inaction, covert facilitation, and online indoctrination could reignite a threat that many had prematurely declared defeated.
In this unfolding drama, Tajikistan’s role is not peripheral. It is central and increasingly dangerous.
