(Reuters) THE United States will help build new facilities for border guards in Tajikistan along the Central Asian country’s frontier with Afghanistan and will also help Uzbekistan to better respond to security threats, the U.S. embassy in Dushanbe said on Wednesday.

The new facility, which will be built in Tajikistan’s southwestern tip, will replace an outdated detachment and allow border guards to “deploy forces more quickly to border areas in response to threats,” the embassy said.

Tajikistan, which has pledged to accept 100,000 Afghan refugees escaping the Taliban, hosts a Russian military base and is a member of a Moscow-led post-Soviet security bloc.
Moscow has reinforced its military base in Tajikistan and its forces are holding a month of exercises near the border with Afghanistan.

The final U.S. forces pulled out of Afghanistan on Monday and President Joe Biden spoke on Tuesday of the end of an era of major military operations to remake other countries.