DUSHANBE, June 8, 2016, Asia-Plus — Some 10,000 natives of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member nations are fighting alongside terrorist organizations in Syria, CSTO Secretary-General Nikolai Bordyuzha said in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, Tuesday.
“Different data are mentioned, but on the whole we are speaking of some 10,000. There are exact data on countries,” CSTO secretary-general noted.
According to Russian media outlets, he underscored that the CSTO knows how many people there are in Syria from Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
“Special services are managing these lists, discovering those who leave, so there is such information,” the CSTO secretary-general was quoted as saying by TASS.
The CSTO will take measures against migration flows from the area of military hostilities in Syria if migrants start threatening the security of the CSTO member nations, Bordyuzha said.
He said the CSTO had a well-functioning system of controlling migration from the area of the Syrian armed conflict and could track trends in the migration process, according to RIA Novosti.
“But we will certainly react and take measures if these migration flows start growing and affecting the security of our states. But there is no need for it so far,” Bordyuzha said.
The CSTO has taken under special control the migration flows from Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq, CSTO Secretary-General Nikolai Bordyuzha told journalists on Tuesday.
“We are just monitoring the situation. Moreover, we agreed to collect monthly data from all the [CSTO member] states to see the general picture of how migration flows are changing in our territory. We are paying special attention to migrants from five countries – Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq,” Bordyuzha said.
The CSTO registers the return of gunmen from Syria to CSTO member countries where they come from, where they later organize ‘terrorist underground,’ Bordyuzha said.
“This information about the returning gunmen can be seen in print media. Some return to organize terrorist underground on the territory of our states,” he said.
He said these facts were fixed in Russia and in Tajikistan which has seen several criminal trials involving people detained after returning from the zone of Syrian combat operations and trying to organize terrorist and political activity in these countries as well as in Kyrgyzstan.
The CSTO is an intergovernmental military alliance comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.
