ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance of six Eurasian countries, says it is concerned about the rising presence of terrorist groups, particularly the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and Tahreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP), along Afghanistan’s border region with Central Asia.
During a press briefing on Wednesday, February 14, General Andrey Serdyukov of Russia who serves as CSTO Joint Chief of Staff said that the main threat to stability in Central Asia comes from international terrorist and extremist organizations operating in Afghanistan.
“In particular, an increase in the number of [militants of] the Afghan Islamic State-Khorasan Province and the Pakistani Taliban movement is being recorded near Tajikistan’s southern border,” Serdyukov said.
According to Serdyukov, the training camps of terrorist groups are expanding, with the main contingent of foreign fighters concentrated in the northern provinces of Afghanistan.
Established in 2002, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is an intergovernmental military alliance in the Eurasian region. Its membership includes six post-Soviet states of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan as well as Russia.
The Taliban’s seizure of power in Afghanistan has heightened security concerns among its neighboring countries, including CSTO member states. These concerns stem from the potential resurgence of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, Tahreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and Jamaat Ansarullah, which regional stakeholders say pose a significant threat to regional stability.
Over the past two years, the CSTO has consistently voiced concerns about the presence of international terrorist groups, particularly in the northern provinces of Afghanistan.
CSTO says that such groups pose a significant security threat to Tajikistan, a CSTO member state who also hosts a notable chunk of political and military opposition groups to the Taliban.
During the past two years, the organization has conducted several military exercises near the Afghanistan border.
Last year, the CSTO’s former Chief of Staff, Colonel General Anatoly Sidorov, said that the Islamic State – Khorasan province (IS-KP) had amassed up to 6,500 members. Of these, 4,000 were reportedly positioned along Tajikistan’s southern borders in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan, Kunduz, and Takhar provinces.
In June 2023, a report from a United Nations sanctions monitoring team revealed that the Taliban’s connections with al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations pose a significant terrorism threat to Afghanistan and its neighboring regions.
Neighboring Pakistan also accuses the Taliban of not doing enough to control the militant group, Tahreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which shares the same ideology with the Taliban. The TTP militants have unleashed a new spate of terrorist attacks in Pakistan.
The regime in Kabul, however, has repeatedly denied the presence of terrorist groups in Afghanistan. The Taliban claims to have eliminated ISIS and that there is no threat from Afghanistan’s territory to any regional country. They say that the neighboring countries should find their solution to tackling terror threats, as the Taliban is not responsible for the security failures of its neighbors.
