Tajikistan’s Ayni Air Base Seizure: A Strategic Earthquake That Shatters India’s Eurasian Ambitions

(DEFENCE SECURITY ASIA) — India’s loss of the Ayni Air Base in Tajikistan marks one of the most consequential strategic reversals in its modern defence history.

The closure of India’s only overseas military foothold in October 2025 has not only erased two decades of geopolitical investment but also exposed the fragility of New Delhi’s long-term vision to project power into Central Asia.

Ayni was the cornerstone of India’s Eurasian strategy—a platform that symbolized its arrival as a regional power with continental reach.

Its fall represents the end of that aspiration, reducing India’s footprint to the subcontinent and depriving it of its only direct operational link to the volatile heart of Asia.

The implications of this loss stretch far beyond Tajikistan’s borders, reverberating through India’s military posture, intelligence architecture, and diplomatic credibility.

As Moscow and Beijing consolidate their dominance in the region, New Delhi now faces a harsh reality: Central Asia’s strategic stage no longer accommodates India as a meaningful player.

The loss also undermines India’s credibility as a “net security provider,” eroding confidence among regional partners who once viewed New Delhi as a viable counterbalance to China’s expanding influence.

It deprives India of a critical surveillance node that once enabled strategic monitoring of transnational terrorism, narcotics routes, and Chinese military activity across the Pamir–Xinjiang axis.

The withdrawal highlights the limits of India’s continental diplomacy, where economic outreach and defence cooperation failed to translate into durable geopolitical leverage.

Ultimately, Ayni’s fall exposes the asymmetry of power that defines Central Asia today—where political allegiance and military access are increasingly dictated by the Russo-Chinese condominium.

Summary

India’s loss of the Ayni Air Base in Tajikistan marks a decisive strategic setback that ends its two-decade military foothold in Central Asia. The closure dismantles India’s only overseas base, crippling its intelligence and operational reach across Afghanistan, Pakistan, and western China. It also exposes New Delhi’s vulnerability to Russo-Chinese dominance in Eurasia, as Tajikistan aligns firmly within their orbit. The loss weakens India’s “Connect Central Asia” and security-provider ambitions, forcing a pivot toward maritime power projection under the Indo-Pacific strategy. Ayni’s fall underscores India’s struggle to sustain continental influence amid intensifying great-power competition in the region.

Ayni’s Symbolism: From Power Projection to Political Isolation

When India invested nearly USD 100 million (about MYR 470 million) to refurbish the Ayni Air Base in the early 2000s, it was making a statement of intent.

The facility, with its 3,200-metre runway, hardened hangars, and radar systems, was designed to serve as India’s window into Eurasia—a vantage point over Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China.

From a military perspective, Ayni was envisioned as a launchpad for humanitarian operations, counterterrorism missions, and intelligence-gathering deep within the region’s complex terrain.

For two decades, it symbolized India’s willingness to shoulder greater regional security responsibilities and evolve from a reactive power into a proactive one.

Yet, despite the technological upgrades and operational potential, Ayni remained a geopolitical hostage—controlled by Tajikistan, constrained by Russia, and increasingly overshadowed by China’s expanding influence.

Moscow never permitted India to station combat aircraft permanently at the base, fearing that it would disrupt Russia’s dominance within the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

Tajikistan, deeply dependent on Russian troops and Chinese financing, maintained a delicate neutrality that ultimately tilted against India.

By 2025, that neutrality was gone, replaced by full alignment with the Russia-China axis—leaving India isolated, outmaneuvered, and strategically displaced.

Loss of Forward Presence: Military and Intelligence Vacuum

The immediate fallout of losing Ayni is the collapse of India’s forward operational reach into Central Asia.

For years, Ayni provided the Indian Air Force (IAF) with the potential—if not the political clearance—to stage operations near the sensitive tri-border region of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China.

In wartime contingencies, Ayni offered a strategic “northern flank” option, enabling hypothetical pincer operations that could have stretched Pakistan’s defences from both sides of the subcontinent.

It also offered logistical and humanitarian support routes independent of Pakistan’s heavily politicized land corridors.

Without Ayni, India has no proximate base to support operations across Afghanistan or northern Pakistan, and no platform from which to monitor Chinese activities in the Wakhan Corridor and Xinjiang.

This absence translates into a sharp degradation of India’s situational awareness in a region once critical to its security calculus.

The loss also weakens India’s ability to track transnational terrorism and narcotics networks flowing from Afghanistan through Central Asia—issues that directly impact Indian security.

Intelligence operations that previously leveraged Ayni’s infrastructure for signals interception and aerial surveillance now face severe geographic limitations.

This vacuum leaves India blind in the very corridor that connects South Asia to Eurasia, at a time when the Taliban resurgence and Islamic State–Khorasan (IS-K) activity are reshaping regional threat landscapes.

Diplomatic Repercussions: India’s Shrinking Eurasian Sphere

Beyond military implications, Ayni’s closure carries immense diplomatic cost for India’s presence in Central Asia.

For years, New Delhi had sought to use Ayni as a gateway for its “Connect Central Asia” policy—an ambitious framework to enhance trade, energy access, and defence partnerships with the region.

Through this lens, the base was not just a military outpost—it was a bridge between South Asia and the Eurasian heartland.

Its loss now underscores the erosion of India’s influence in multilateral structures like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), where Russia and China set the agenda.

India’s ability to shape regional narratives on counterterrorism, narcotics trafficking, and infrastructure connectivity has been significantly weakened.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s growing partnership with China through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has effectively isolated India from key continental routes.

Tajikistan’s decision to expel Indian personnel, though couched in terms of sovereignty, aligns neatly with Beijing’s broader objective of eliminating rival presences near its western frontier.

For Dushanbe, the political dividends of aligning with Russia and China—both powerful patrons offering security and financial guarantees—outweighed any symbolic partnership with India.

The diplomatic message to New Delhi is unmistakable: Central Asia’s small states now see more value in patron-client relations with Moscow and Beijing than in distant, project-based partnerships with India.

Russia and China: Consolidating the Vacuum

The power vacuum created by India’s departure has been rapidly filled by Russia and China.

For Moscow, Ayni’s reclamation by Tajikistan reaffirms its long-standing control over Central Asia’s military architecture, anchored by its 201st Motor Rifle Division.

The division, one of Russia’s largest overseas deployments, remains stationed across multiple Tajik bases, reinforcing Moscow’s role as the region’s primary security guarantor.

For China, the event marks another victory in its silent campaign to build a contiguous arc of influence across Eurasia through economic leverage and security partnerships.

Beijing has already established joint patrols and security outposts along Tajikistan’s eastern border, integrating them into its Belt and Road security framework.

This development ensures that China now holds operational proximity to the same corridor India once viewed as its strategic observation post.

With Ayni out of India’s hands, Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army gains uncontested intelligence dominance across the Wakhan–Xinjiang axis, complementing its growing satellite and UAV surveillance networks in the region.

Together, Russia and China have effectively partitioned Central Asia’s security responsibilities—Russia maintaining the military backbone, and China providing the financial arteries.

India, by contrast, finds itself excluded from the emerging dual hegemony that now defines Eurasia’s strategic landscape.

Impact on India’s Defence Doctrine and Expeditionary Strategy

The loss of Ayni forces India to confront an uncomfortable truth about its military doctrine: it lacks sustainable expeditionary logistics and host-nation resilience in contested theatres.

For nearly two decades, Ayni was India’s experiment in long-range force projection—an overseas base dependent on foreign political will rather than sovereign control.

Its closure exposes India’s vulnerability in securing overseas operating rights, especially in regions where Russia and China exert veto power.

From a doctrinal standpoint, the withdrawal reduces India’s capacity to conduct high-altitude air operations, joint military exercises, and forward-deployed humanitarian missions in Central Asia.

It also complicates India’s ability to train and test in environmental conditions similar to the Himalayas—a capability Ayni’s altitude and geography had uniquely provided.

In response, New Delhi is expected to intensify its maritime-centric strategy, focusing on naval basing agreements with partners in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), Southeast Asia, and the Gulf.

This pivot aligns with India’s broader Indo-Pacific framework, where sea control and maritime domain awareness offer more viable pathways for influence than continental basing.

The shift also underscores the growing importance of technology-driven projection—long-range UAVs, satellite ISR, and cyber reconnaissance—as replacements for physical basing.

However, analysts warn that such tools, while effective for surveillance, cannot substitute for the political and psychological weight of an on-ground presence like Ayni once provided.

Economic and Strategic Opportunity Costs

The economic fallout of Ayni’s loss is equally substantial.

The base had cost India an estimated USD 100 million (MYR 470 million) to upgrade—a sum now effectively written off without long-term returns.

That investment had included advanced runway infrastructure, radar systems, and perimeter defences—all of which now benefit Tajikistan’s military establishment and, indirectly, its Russian and Chinese patrons.

India also loses the potential to leverage Ayni for energy and connectivity projects across Central Asia, including oil and gas imports from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

Without physical access, India’s participation in the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) becomes geographically constrained, forcing dependence on Iranian and maritime routes.

This limits India’s role as a transit hub between Eurasia and the Indian Ocean, reducing its strategic value as an alternative to China’s BRI corridors.

Furthermore, the inability to maintain a sustained presence in Tajikistan will likely diminish Indian defence exports and training initiatives once envisioned for Central Asian militaries.

The economic and logistical cost of redeploying personnel and equipment also strains India’s already stretched defence resources amid ongoing modernization efforts and border challenges with China.

A Strategic Void in the New Great Game

At the geopolitical level, Ayni’s loss confirms that India has been effectively sidelined in the New Great Game for Central Asia.

The region, once seen by Indian strategists as a bridge to influence, has now hardened into a Russian-Chinese buffer zone with minimal space for external actors.

India’s exclusion diminishes its ability to influence counterterrorism policies, trade corridors, and energy alignments in the region.

It also undermines the concept of India as a “net security provider” in its extended neighbourhood—an image it has sought to cultivate through decades of peacekeeping and regional diplomacy.

Ayni’s closure also emboldens Pakistan, which perceives India’s retreat from Central Asia as a validation of its strategic depth through the northwestern corridor.

Islamabad’s growing alignment with Beijing and its participation in SCO activities further consolidate India’s isolation on the Eurasian stage.

For Washington and Tokyo—India’s Indo-Pacific partners—the event signals a structural limitation in India’s ability to engage in continental security frameworks.

While India retains leverage in the maritime Indo-Pacific, its continental influence now effectively stops at the Himalayas.

Lessons in Power, Geography, and Realism

India’s loss of Ayni Air Base is not just a tactical withdrawal—it is a strategic reckoning.

It demonstrates that geopolitical ambition without sustained leverage and regional alignment is unsustainable in the long run.

The episode reveals how external basing efforts can crumble under the weight of competing great-power pressures when not underpinned by deep political agreements.

It also highlights the shifting geometry of global power—where Russia and China continue to carve exclusive spheres of influence while mid-tier powers like India struggle to preserve strategic footholds.

For New Delhi, the experience serves as a sobering lesson: overseas influence cannot be built on financial investment alone; it requires enduring political trust, regional integration, and consistent engagement.

As India pivots back to the Indo-Pacific, Ayni’s fall remains a symbolic reminder of the limits of continental projection and the high cost of strategic overreach.

In the broader narrative of the 21st-century Great Game, Ayni stands as the cautionary tale of a rising power outflanked by geography, constrained by alliances, and overtaken by time.

It underscores how India’s strategic imagination remains constrained by geography, with the Himalayas forming both a shield and a ceiling to its continental ambitions.

The episode also exposes the imbalance between India’s diplomatic rhetoric and its hard-power capabilities, revealing the gap between aspiration and execution in its foreign policy machinery.

Ayni’s loss demonstrates that in modern geopolitics, infrastructure and investment cannot substitute for sustained influence without a corresponding political ecosystem of trust and dependency.

It further illustrates how emerging powers must navigate the realities of multipolar competition, where soft influence is easily eclipsed by the coercive tools of entrenched great powers.

Ultimately, the fall of Ayni reinforces a broader strategic truth—that enduring power projection is not defined by presence alone, but by the ability to shape outcomes in environments beyond one’s borders.

— DEFENCE SECURITY ASIA