Moscow. July 7. INTERFAX - About 1,500 Afghan military personnel during armed clashes with the Taliban (the Taliban movement, a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation) have crossed into the territory of Tajikistan over the past two weeks, Permanent and plenipotentiary representative of Tajikistan to the CSTO Hasan Sultonov said.
"Over the past two weeks, about 1,500 soldiers of the Afghan government troops have crossed into the territory of Tajikistan," Sultonov said at a meeting of the CSTO permanent Council.
According to him, the soldiers of the Afghan government troops crossed the border areas during armed clashes with the Taliban.
The CSTO includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, which chairs the organization in 2021. The CSTO has a collective rapid reaction force.
On July 6, Anatoly Sidorov, the head of the CSTO Joint Staff, arrived in Tajikistan on the plane of the Russian Defense Ministry with an operational group to assess the situation on the border with Afghanistan. "The main goal in the work of the task force is to monitor the situation in the Tajik-Afghan border area and prepare proposals for joint measures in the CSTO format," Sidorov said, whose words were quoted in the press service of the CSTO Joint Staff.
The United States and its allies must withdraw their troops from Afghanistan by September 11 this year. The withdrawal of troops takes place against the background of the activation of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. Since May, the Taliban have been conducting a large-scale offensive and pushing back government forces.
According to media reports, the Taliban currently control 110 of the 370 districts of the country. It is reported that groups of soldiers of the Afghan government forces are crossing into the territory of Tajikistan under the onslaught of the Taliban.
After the collapse of the USSR, the Tajik-Afghan border was guarded by Russian border guards. In 2005, the border protection was completely transferred to the responsibility of the State Border Protection Committee of Tajikistan, Russian border guards were withdrawn from Tajikistan. The border department of the FSB of the Russian Federation in Tajikistan was transformed into an operational border group without a military component.
