DUSHANBE, June 26, 2015, Asia-Plus – Tajik President Emomali Rahmon today held a meeting with representatives of Tajik student youth on the occasion of the National Unity Day.
According to the Tajik president’s official website, the meeting was held in the building of the Tajik Agricultural University and the meeting participants reportedly exchanged views on issues related to the National Unity Day, studying modern sciences and professions, ways to prevent youth radicalization in the country, and respect to older generation.
Speaking at the meeting, Rahmon noted that security and national unity of Tajikistan could become vulnerable under the impact of processes and events taking place in today’s controversial world, including new increasing threats such as fanaticism, religious extremism, terrorism and other organized transnational crimes.
“Today religious extremism is obtaining more and more transnational and global character,” said the president said. “This dangerous phenomenon is spreading in various regions and countries of the world, posing a real threat to security of separate countries and international community as a whole.”
Increasing influence of the Islamic Sate of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) militant group, ruthless killing of thousands of Muslims, destruction of cultural heritage and intensification of radical ideologies in some neighboring countries, including Afghanistan, cannot but evoke serious concern, Rahmon noted.
Rahmon noted that there were more than 300 Tajik nationals, aged 18 to 35, fighting alongside ISIS militants in Syria and Iraq. “More than 100 Tajik nationals have been killed in Iraq and Syria for ISIS ideas,” the president said.
“According to the information we have, there are 18 Tajik students fighting alongside ISIS militants, seven of them have gone to Syria from higher educational institutions of foreign countries and eleven from Tajik higher-educational institutions,” the president said.
This year is the 18th anniversary of the National Unity Day of Tajikistan. Eighteen years ago, on June 27, 1997, the confronting sides signed in Moscow the General Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and National Accord in Tajikistan. For the purposes of achieving peace and national accord in Tajikistan and overcoming the consequences of the civil war, inter-Tajik talks on national reconciliation were conducted from April 1994 to 1997 under the auspices of the United Nations.
Protocols that were agreed and signed in the course of eight rounds of talks between delegations of the Government of Tajikistan and the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), six meetings between the President of Tajikistan and the UTO leader, and also three rounds of consultations between the delegations of the sides in Almaty, Ashgabat, Bishkek, Islamabad, Kabul, Mashhad (Iran), Moscow, Tehran and Khusdeh (Afghanistan) constituted the General Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and National Accord in Tajikistan.
