Barely guarded Afghan border puts Tajikistan in peril: Reuters

PanARMENIAN.Net - Tajikistan, the poorest country in the former Soviet Union, is now barely defended from armed smugglers, kidnappers and what its rulers say is a looming threat from Islamist insurgents looking for a new front in their global holy war, Reuters said.

“The three Tajik construction workers were quietly mending a road near the Panj River last month when they stumbled on a group of men with assault rifles who had crossed over from Afghanistan in broad daylight.

The gunmen shot and wounded one worker and took the two others back across the river into Afghanistan. A few days later, Tajik border guard commanders negotiated the release of the kidnapped pair through elders of nearby Afghan villages, the border guards say.

It's the sort of incident that has become increasingly frequent near towns like Shuro-obod on the Tajik-Afghan border, where what was once one of the heavily guarded frontiers of the Cold War has all but melted away,” Reuters said.

"Terrorist organizations are expanding their activity and the situation is further complicated by their resurgence in neighboring Afghanistan," President Imomali Rakhmon said in his annual address this year.

At a section of the border near Shuro-obod visited by Reuters there was no fence, no evidence of servicemen patrolling, and the nearest Tajik border guard post was several kilometers (miles) away.

The border is a major route for narcotics from Afghanistan, the world's main producer of opium used to make heroin, to Central Asia and on to Russia and Europe.

The only barrier to anyone wanting to cross is the river, which meanders through deep canyons, about 50 meters wide at this time of year. Smugglers float across using tire inner tubes as rafts, locals say.

The threat of violent Islamism spilling over into ex-Soviet central Asia has grown more acute since NATO member states pulled out most of their forces from Afghanistan, leading to a deterioration in security there.

The risk was brought home by Taliban attacks on the Afghan city of Kunduz, not far from the border, first last year when attackers briefly seized the city and then again last week when the Taliban launched another offensive.

The United States and Russia, major powers in the region, look to Tajikistan to act as a bulwark against the spread of Islamist violence, but it is ill-equipped.

Its national security expenditure which includes border protection is just $164 million a year, and its security forces are creaking. Last year one of its most elite police commanders left the country and joined the Islamic State group. Tajik officials believe he went to fight in Syria.

While the Afghan Taliban have yet to mount major cross border attacks, Tajik officials fear domestic Islamist fighters could ally with Islamic State or other groups across the frontier, using Afghanistan as a base for an insurgency.