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AT Monitoring Desk-KABUL: More than a thousand terrorists have gathered along bordering areas of Afghanistan and Tajikistan which is said that will pose security threat for both South Asian countries.
According to Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency, the issue was shared by a top-rank security official from Tajikistan during a session of the Council of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Border Forces Commanders.
Sherali Khairulloyev, national security aide to Tajikistan’s President, said one of the biggest tasks today was to prevent the transformation of Central Asian countries into a center of geopolitical confrontation of the world’s largest powers at a time when the threat of international terrorism was getting bigger from one day to another.
Khairulloyev warned that the militants were clearly seeking to create hotbeds of tensions and seize state power in the regional nations through the use of force.
He said this would be happening along Afghanistan’s border with CIS member-states, the length of which is 2,340 km.
“If the countries and secret services that have keen interest in the Islamic Caliphate project try and implement it through Afghanistan, the zone of political instability will then protrude to the CIS and China,” he added.
Meanwhile, the First Deputy Chief of Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security, Commander of Border Troops, Rajabali Rakhmonali, said that around 1,500 militants have concentrated on the opposite side of the border.
Citing official data on militants’ number within the Afghan soil, Rakhmonali, said operative information suggests the militants are mostly concentrated in Dasht-i-Archi and Imam Sahib districts of northern Kunduz province. “The ranks of the militants include members of Taliban, al-Qaida, Islamic State, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and Ansarullo organization,” Rakhmonali said.
He added that combat actions and tensions continued unabated in the Afghan provinces of Takhar, Kunduz and Badakhshan.
On the same occasion, chief of Uzbekistan’s border troops, Nasirbek Usmanbekov, said certain numbers of militants in the parts of Afghanistan adjoining border with Uzbekistan were also noted.
About data provided by secret services, Usmanbekov said the data we have indicates a certain concentration of militant forces but not in the quantities as in the vicinity of the Tajikistani-Afghan border. “Their concentration near our borders is much, much smaller and our border-guard units have enough strength to repel possible strikes from the Afghan territory,” he added.
However, officials in the Afghan Ministry of Defense (MoD) said military operations are ongoing in different parts of the northern provinces which share border with Tajikistan. “We have launched military operations in Badakhshan, Takhar, Kunduz and other northern provinces to prevent terrorists’ infiltration,” said Gen. Dawlat Waziri, the MoD spokesman, as quoted by Radio Azadi on Friday.
He said the Afghan government is committed to suppress militants in northern Afghanistan and there is no place to concern in this regard. “Any group which wants to destabilize northern provinces will be prevented and eliminated. We have launched military operations against them. Our policy is clear towards terrorists; we will not let them to threat security of northern provinces or any neighboring country.
