The Collective Security Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will adopt a program for securing the Tajik-Afghan border, CSTO Secretary-General Imangali Tasmagambetov announced in an interview with Belarusian TV channel STV on November 25.
According to CSTO’s Telegram channel, the adoption of the document will take place at the CSTO Collective Security Council meeting that will take place in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, on November 28.
Tasmagambetov noted that Afghan-related issues remain one of the CSTO’s key areas of focus.
"Although the situation seems to have stabilized and is slowly moving toward peace, there are still numerous terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, making the issue extremely serious," Tasmagambetov said.
According to him, the signing of this program will allow CSTO member states to collectively improve the security of this strategically important border, ensuring greater safety for Central Asia’s countries.
The CSTO Parliamentary Assembly’s official website notes that the program is set for five years and will be implemented in three stages. During the first stage, lasting one year, Tajikistan is to submit proposals for reinforcing specific border sections. During this time, member states are expected to identify the material and other resources they can provide to support Tajikistan’s border security. This would be followed by stages two and three, during which specific measures for border security will be developed and implemented.
Despite high-level statements, concrete actions under the program are only in the initial planning stages.
A decision that the CSTO will develop an interstate program to help Tajikistan strengthen control of its common border with Afghanistan was made at a meeting of the CSTO heads of state that took place in Sochi, Russia on September 23. A joint plan to protect Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan was among major topics of the meeting.
It’s worth noting that discussions about this program date back to 2023.
The chief of the Joint Staff of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Colonel-General Anatoly Sidorov, speaking at a press conference in Moscow on February 14 last year, described al-Qaida and the Afghan branch of Islamic State, known as Islamic State – Khorasan Province, or IS-K, as “the most dangerous” groups.
"The number of members of the Islamic State’s Afghan branch, Wilayat Khorasan (IS-K), has significantly increased to about 6,500, with up to 4,000 militants concentrated in the [Afghan] provinces of Badakhshan, Kunduz, and Takhar along the border with Tajikistan," Russian state-run TASS news agency quoted Sidorov as saying.
According to Sidorov, the biggest threat to stability in Central Asia comes from numerous extremist groups that have gained a foothold in Afghanistan. The Islamic State and Al-Qaeda (both outlawed in Russia) are the most dangerous ones, he added.
In 2017, the CSTO promised once again to assist Tajikistan with reinforcing its common border with Afghanistan. The then Secretary-General of the CSTO, Valery Semerikov, discussed this issues during phone talks with the then Secretary of Tajikistan’s Security Council Abdurahim Qahhorov on February 9, 2017.
According to the SCTO official website, Semerikov noted that a group of specialists from the CSTO Secretariat would arrive in Dushanbe “to work through the target program for reinforcement of Tajikistan’s national border with Afghanistan.”
However, the Russia-led bloc has not rendered any serious assistance to Tajik border guards over the past eleven years.
