Addressing a meeting on Friday, the Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Imangali Tasmagambetov has expressed deep concern over the escalating risk of terrorist groups infiltrating CSTO member states from Afghanistan.
In the meeting with senior officials from the organization’s secretariat and joint headquarters, according to TASS news agency, Tasmagambetov said: “There is an increasing risk that terrorist groups and extremist ideas will infiltrate the territories of our CSTO allies. Complex threats coming from Afghanistan are of particular concern,”
The Secretary General of CSTO also noted that apart from various terrorist groups, the forces behind illicit drug production and trafficking were also strengthening their positions in Afghanistan.
In February, Colonel General Anatoly Sidorov, the Chief of Joint Staff of the CSTO, also claimed that the Islamic State – Khorasan province (ISKP) had amassed up to 6,500 members, with 4,000 located along Tajikistan’s southern borders in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan, Kunduz, and Takhar provinces.The Taliban, however, have denied the presence of ISKP fighters in Afghanistan, claiming they have suppressed the group, and that
