Dushanbe concerned by fights near Tajik border in Afghanistan - source
DUSHANBE. April 2 (Interfax) - The government forces of Afghanistan are in heavy fighting with Taliban insurgents in Badakhshan Province bordering with Tajikistan, a high-ranking source in the frontier department of the Tajik State Committee for National Security told Interfax on Tuesday.
This fact concerns Tajikistan, however Tajik frontier guards are working as usual.
"Heavy fighting is underway between Taliban insurgents and government forces in the areas in 30-50 kilometers from the Tajik-Afghan border in the Afghan district of Warduj, in which, according to our data, 18 Afghan servicemen have already been killed," the source said.
"It cannot but concern us because these areas are close to the Ishkoshim border and we are watching developments closely in border areas," the source said.
The Ishkoshim District is in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province (GBAP) of Tajikistan, 100 kilometers to the south of the GBAP in the town of Khorog. Khorog is 520 kilometers to the east of Dushanbe.
"Frontier guards of the Ishkoshim frontier unit are currently working as usual because this frontier unit was reinforced in July 2012 amid the information that insurgents of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) could be plotting entry points to Tajikistan," the source said.
The IMU, tightly related to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, supports forceful change of constitutional structures in Central Asian republics and uniting them in the framework of the so-called Islamic Caliphate. The IMU is recognized as a terrorist organization in the whole CIS, the United States and a number of EU countries. IMU insurgents are detained quite often in Tajikistan and courts find them guilty of preparing terrorist attacks and attempts to change the constitutional regime by force.
"The Ishkoshim frontier unit is assisted by units of the Tajik Defense Ministry deployed there," the source said.
In the past three months, around a dozen attempts of armed insurgents to cross the 1,344-kilometer border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan were terminated, two suspected drug dealers were killed and several detained.
