Rakhmon proposed to the CSTO to create a security belt around Afghanistan
The CSTO countries need to focus on countering sleeper cells of international terrorism, extremism and religious radicalism, which conduct recruitment and propaganda activities and promote destructive ideology.
President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon stated this at the online summit of the heads of CSTO member states, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“In this regard, the aggressive activity of Salafia and Wahhabism should be especially noted. Followers of these movements form the backbone of the Islamic State. We in Tajikistan are fighting with all our might against the propaganda and subversive work of emissaries of banned organizations. Every year we record an increase in Internet resources of a terrorist nature. The tendency for our citizens, including labor migrants, to fall under the influence of agitators of terrorist organizations is not decreasing,” Rakhmon noted.
He recalled that tens of thousands of citizens of the CSTO member countries visited Iraq and Syria.
“Some of them were destroyed. A logical question arises: where did the rest go, how many of them were detained or returned to their homeland? Therefore, our countries need to establish more effective coordination of intelligence services in the fight against transnational organized crime, including in cyberspace,” the president said.
He named foreign religious educational centers as another danger.
“We must pay special attention to the problem of the uncontrolled departure of our citizens to study in foreign religious centers, where they often undergo thorough extremist training. Over the past few years, Tajikistan has not only neutralized the channels for sending its citizens to religious education, but has returned more than 5 thousand of its citizens from such centers to their homeland,” said the Tajik leader.
But the main danger, in his opinion, comes from Afghanistan.
“Since the second half of August last year, thousands of members of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Ansarullah, Hizb ut-Tahrir, IMU and other terrorist groups have been released from prisons in Afghanistan, which has led to the intensification of their activities, the strengthening of their combat and subversive potential." We are extremely concerned by the fact that the positions of ISIS militants, especially its branches, are strengthening in Afghanistan,” says Rakhmon.
He added that according to Tajikistan's special services, the number of camps and centers for training terrorists on the borders of the CSTO in the northeastern provinces of Afghanistan is over 40, and their number reaches more than 6 thousand militants.
“The CSTO member states should take extremely seriously the fact that some of our citizens, observing how the positions of terrorists in Afghanistan are strengthening, having enlisted their support, can take the most extreme measures... The situation on the Tajik-Afghan border is becoming more complicated every day, there are battles right along the borders between the Taliban themselves, in recent weeks, in one area alone, more than 11 Taliban have been killed and more than 18 injured. We need to create a security belt around Afghanistan,” Rakhmon concluded.
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