Ayni’s Soviet history is the thinnest part of its story. English Wikipedia says only that it served as a Soviet military base in the Cold War and decayed after the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989; which regiments flew from it, and when it opened, were not found in a source that could be checked, and this page does not guess. What is agreed is that by the end of the 1990s it was, in ThePrint’s word, dilapidated.

India’s interest grew out of Afghanistan. Before 2001 New Delhi backed the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, and India’s Tribune reported in November 2003 that an agreement signed during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit provided for Indian army and air force personnel at a Tajik base, then named as Farkhor. ThePrint’s account of 2021 says the Ayni project began in 2001–2002 under Defence Minister George Fernandes, with Group Captain Naseem Akhtar sent to start the work and the Ministry of External Affairs paying.

The work was substantial. The runway was extended to 3,200 m; hangars, overhaul facilities and aircraft refuelling were added; and a Border Roads Organisation team under a brigadier did much of the building. At its peak about 200 Indians were on the site, ThePrint says. Its first commander once operational, from around the end of 2005, was Group Captain B. S. Dhanoa, who later rose to Air Chief Marshal and head of the Indian Air Force.

When the Tajik government declared the renovation complete in September 2010, with a military parade and a visit by the president, the question every journalist asked was who would use it. RFE/RL reported that India had paid US$70 million, and that some experts expected India to win the right to use it, while others doubted Tajikistan would risk its relations with Pakistan.

Russia had been reported first in line. According to RFE/RL, Russian media said in August 2008 that Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Emomali Rahmon had agreed that Russia would station Su-25s and helicopters at Ayni; the Tajik defence ministry spokesman, Faridun Muhammadaliev, dismissed the reports as baseless. A US assistant secretary of state, Robert Blake, denied that Washington wanted access, and a proposal to move French aircraft there from Dushanbe airport was also reported. The official line was that Ayni belonged to the Tajik air force and air defence.

The official line and the practice diverged. ThePrint later described the aerodrome as jointly administered by India and Tajikistan for nearly two decades, and reported a temporary deployment of Indian Su-30MKI fighters, which Wikipedia dates to 2014 onwards. No Indian or Tajik official statement confirming a fighter deployment was found in the sources checked.

The base proved its worth to India once, and conspicuously. As the Taliban took Kabul in August 2021, Indian Air Force C-17s and C-130Js used Gissar as a staging point to avoid the crush at Kabul airport. ThePrint reported that a C-17 waited there for American clearance, that the embassy staff were flown out on 17 August, and that one C-130J carried 87 Indians from Kabul to Tajikistan, with Air India aircraft also used in the operation.

The same collapse removed the reason for the base. The bilateral agreement lapsed — in 2021 according to a ThePrint column of October 2025, in 2022 according to Wikipedia — and was not renewed. Indian media reported in late October 2025 that the withdrawal was complete. The ThePrint column, by Swasti Rao, attributed Tajikistan’s decision to Russian and Chinese pressure on a “non-regional actor”; the Indian education site Drishti IAS pointed instead to the end of India’s Afghan allies. Neither explanation was confirmed by the Indian, Tajik, Russian or Chinese governments in the sources checked, and neither is adopted here.