DUSHANBE, February 15, 2016, Asia-Plus – Radio Liberty reports that the situation in northern Afghanistan, in areas along the border with Central Asia, has been deteriorating for more than two years now. Local officials, military officials, and residents of the northern provinces reportedly admit there are districts near or at the border of Central Asia that are currently under the control of the Taliban and their foreign militant friends.
RFE/RL”s Turkmen Service
assembled a panel on February 10 to discuss the recent developments in northern Afghanistan and how these developments are impacting neighbors to the north.
Azatlyk director Muhammad Tahir moderated the discussion and its participants included Obaid Ali of the Afghan Analysts Network from Kabul, Helene Thibault, professor at the University of Montreal”s School of Public and International Affairs (Canada), and Bruce Pannier,
RFE/RL
correspondent covering events in Central Asia and energy issues.
The panel first listened to an audio recording of Imomuddin Kureyshi, the head of the Imam Sahib district in Kunduz Province, who spoke with RFE/RL at the start of February.
“The people who make explosives and carry out suicide bombings are organized by Tajik and Uzbek militants. According to reports we have received from the intelligence [service], their numbers are about 200 in Imam-Sahib and Dashti Archi districts,” Kureyshi said.
The Imam Sahib and Archi (sometimes called Dashti Archi) districts border Tajikistan.
Ali confirmed some of what Kureyshi said. Ali was in the Archi district and he said, “There they [foreign militants] have their training bases where they train Afghans, Taliban, and also other Central Asian fighters who came to Afghanistan.” But Ali cautioned about the numbers of these foreign fighters. “I would like to mention that the number of Central Asian fighters or foreign fighters supporting the Taliban in Kunduz Province is not clear,” he said.
Kureyshi had even more sensational news. “Some of them have even created a base…in Tajikistan on the other side of the river. When militants come under pressure on the Afghan side they escape to their base in Tajikistan,” he claimed.
Tajik border guards reject this claim. Thibault has been to the border area and she also found it difficult to believe militants would be able to cross from Afghanistan into Tajikistan because, she said, there is not much support for militant groups on the Tajik side of the border. “The connections between the two peoples are actually quite limited,” Thibault explained. “Within [Tajikistan”s] population there isn”t much support for Taliban and even not so much interest in Afghanistan.”
Reporting on the situation along the Tajik-Afghan frontier on February 3, Russia”s
TASS
news agency quoted a “representative” of Tajikistan”s State Committee for National Security as saying there were some 5,000 militants along the Tajik border in northern Afghanistan. Russia media has been prone to quoting officials and experts who provide dire and sometimes incredible assessments and information about the Central Asian-Afghan border region. But interestingly, the “representative”
TASS
quoted also mentioned “several hundred militants in the Imam Sahib district,” which jibes with what Kureyshi told
RFE/RL
.
Ali said, “What I noticed particularly in Kunduz Province, the places or the areas where the militants are more interested to establish their bases, actually it”s very close to the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border.”
But on the other side of the border Thibault said that at the moment, “Tajik authorities are more concerned with internal politics than they are with external politics, especially the Afghan conflict.”
Ali concluded the discussion by saying, “this is the time the government needs to gain the ground.” He followed that comment by saying, “If they [the government] lose it at this time it means that during the spring and summer the Taliban will obviously start their so-called spring offensive, so that will be very difficult for the government to fight against the Taliban in several fronts across the country.”
The group discussed these issues and greater detail and looked at other issues of security along the Central Asia-Afghan border. You can listen to the full roundtable below:
On February 11, the day after the panel discussion, the power line from Tajikistan to Kunduz was cut.
