Tajikistan and China will hold joint anti-terrorism exercises at least once a year, Asianews reports.
This is stated in the intergovernmental agreement, Radio Ozodi reported, citing the text of the agreement. Earlier, President Emomali Rahmon instructed the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan to sign this agreement on behalf of the government of Tajikistan.
The agreement notes that the military personnel of the two countries during the exercises will work out coordination of actions in the event of a threat of infiltration of terrorists. The host country of the military exercises will provide military personnel with weapons and equipment, create all conditions for the entry and movement of military equipment along the previously planned route.
Before that, the servicemen of Tajikistan and China conducted military exercises on the territory of the military garrison in the Ishkashim district of GBAO in Tajikistan and at the base of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan in the Ramit Gorge. Then the special forces of the two countries worked out the attack of conditional terrorists who penetrated from Afghanistan, and representatives of the SCO countries followed the exercises.
Military cooperation between China and Tajikistan has noticeably intensified since 2015. Prior to this, China limited its cooperation with Tajikistan mainly in the economic sphere - Chinese companies are mainly engaged in the development of gold and silver deposits in Tajikistan.
In February 2019, the Washington Post, citing stories from local residents and satellite images of the area, wrote that a secret Chinese military base has been located in the Murgab district of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, a few kilometers from the border with China, for three years. In the 19th century, there was an advanced Cossack post of the Russian Empire in this area, but local residents, in an interview with an American journalist, claimed that today several hundred Chinese soldiers are stationed in the area.
However, the Tajik authorities denied this information, saying that only a border post is located on the border with GBAO on the territory of the PRC itself.
In October 2021, the Tajik authorities announced that China would build a base in the village of Vakhan in the Ishkashim district of GBAO, but it would belong to a special rapid response unit of the Organized Crime Control Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan.
CentralasianLIGHT.org
November 21, 2022