DUSHANBE, November 26, 2015, Asia-Plus – Local experts say the decision to withdraw Russian servicemen from the city of Kulob causes very different suggestions.
The 149th motor rifle regiment of the Russian 201st military base in Tajikistan which is currently deployed in the Tajik southern city of Kulob will be relocated to Dushanbe and the Lohour training ground, which is located in the Roudaki district, some 40 kilometers southwest of Dushanbe.
The redeployment was reportedly agreed with the Ministry of Defense of Tajikistan and is going according to plan. Military facility in Kulob will be handed over to the jurisdiction of Tajikistan’s authorities.
“From Kulob to the Afghan border is only 42 kilometers, while from Lohour to the Afghan border is about 300 kilometers and from Qurghon Teppa is about 200 kilometers,” said Zafar Ikromov, former senior adviser to the president for defense and law and order issues. “The military unit deployed in Kulob is a reserve force to support border guards patrolling the Hamadoni stretch of the Tajik-Afghan border and the military unit deployed in Qurghon Teppa is a reserve force to support border guards patrolling the Panj stretch of the border.”
“The Hamadoni stretch is the most vulnerable part of the Tajik-Afghan border due to is complicated mountainous landscape, and even during the Soviet era, border guards had failed to patrol it properly,” Ikromov said.
“In my onion, the first mistake was the withdrawal of Russian border guards from the Tajik-Afghan border because our Tajik border troops are still at the stage of formation, and the withdrawal of the Russian 149 regiment from Kulob will be the second mistake,” he added.
We will recall that the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Secretary-General Nikolai Bordyuzha said in March that the group”s rapid reaction forces could reach the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border in three days if fighting broke out there
Meanwhile, Major-General Yevgeniy Tubol, the commander of the Russian military base in Tajikistan, told representatives of the Working Group on Afghanistan under the CSTO Foreign Ministers’ Council on April 2 that the base’s forces could be at the Tajik-Afghan border within a day if a conflict broke there.
