MOSCOW. July 7 (Interfax) - It is unlikely that the Taliban (terrorist organization, banned in Russia) will decide to invade Tajikistan, Nikolai Bordyuzha, former secretary general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), said.
"I think that today we should not really say we expect a direct invasion by the Taliban into the territory of Tajikistan," Bordyuzha said in an interview with Rossiya-24 television channel (VGTRK).
Bordyuzha was the director of the Federal Border Guard Service and secretary of the Russian Security Council last year.
"The Taliban went to the Tajik border in the mid-1990s. The Taliban could already be seen with a binocular on the other side of the Panj. We saw all that. And then, fairly serious efforts were taken by Russia and all states, primarily members of the CSTO, to ensure stability in Tajikistan, and in the other countries of the Central Asian region," Bordyuzha said.
"The CSTO has enough collective forces and means that can be used for border control, for countering any attempt to invade the territory of Tajikistan," he said.
The CSTO comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan, which chairs the organization in 2021. The CSTO has a collective rapid reaction force.
Bordyuzha said that amid the aggravation of the situation in Afghanistan, it is necessary to strengthen the borders of the Central Asian countries and to think about economic assistance to Tajikistan, which will face refugees from Afghanistan.
"The first problem is security. The second problem is economics. We need to accommodate a large number of citizens of Afghanistan who have entered the territory of Tajikistan, feed them, create some minimal conditions," he said.
"This aggravation threatens all Central Asian states, Russia's allies and Russia itself. If this aggravation causes destabilization in the Central Asian states over time, it will affect Russia in any case," Bordyuzha said on the situation in Afghanistan.
Anatoly Sidorov, the head of the CSTO joint headquarters, and an operative group arrived in Tajikistan on a Russian Defense Ministry plane on Tuesday to assess the situation on the Afghan border.
The United States and its allies are expected to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021. The withdrawal of troops is taking place amid the increase in the Taliban activities in Afghanistan. The Taliban have conducted a large-scale offensive operation, pushing the government troops, since May.
According to media reports, the Taliban now control 110 of the country's 370 districts. It was reported that groups of Afghan government troops were entering the territory of Tajikistan under pressure from the Taliban.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Tajik-Afghan border was protected by Russian border guards. In 2005, the Tajik Border Forces took full responsibility of border protection and the Russian border guards were withdrawn. The Border Guard Directorate of the Russian Federal Security Service in Tajikistan was made an operative border guard group without a military component.
The 201st Russian military base is stationed in Tajikistan. It is the largest Russian military facility outside Russia.