The Collective Security Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will adopt a program to secure the Tajik-Afghan border, CSTO Secretary General Imangali Tasmagambetov said in an interview with Belarusian STV, the organization's Telegram channel reported.
The document will be adopted at the CSTO Collective Security Council meeting on November 28 in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Tasmagambetov noted that the Afghan issue remains one of the CSTO's most important areas of focus.
“Although the situation seems to have stabilized and is slowly moving toward peaceful resolution, there are still many terrorist organizations operating in Afghanistan. This is undoubtedly a very serious problem,” Tasmagambetov stated.
He emphasized that signing this program would enable CSTO member states to jointly improve the security of this strategically important area, providing greater safety for Central Asian countries.
It is worth noting that this program was discussed as early as 2023.
In February of last year, the head of the CSTO Joint Staff, Colonel-General Anatoly Sidorov, stated that "the number of fighters in the Afghan branch of the Islamic State - ‘Wilayah Khorasan’ - has significantly increased, now reaching about 6,500 militants, with up to 4,000 concentrated in Afghanistan's Badakhshan, Kunduz, and Takhar provinces, near the border with Tajikistan."
He further mentioned that in the Central Asian region, the main threat to stability stems from numerous extremist groups entrenched in Afghanistan, with the most dangerous being the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.
The "Wilayah Khorasan" branch of ISIS first appeared in eastern Afghanistan in January 2015. By late 2019, the U.S. and the former Afghan government declared that the group had been nearly eradicated, as hundreds of its fighters were killed during counterterrorism operations.
CentralasianLIGHT.org
November 25, 2024