Tajikistan on Wednesday called on members of a Russian-led military bloc to help it deal with security challenges emerging from Afghanistan, hours after Moscow pledged to defend its regional allies affected by the unrest.
The security situation in Afghanistan has rapidly deteriorated as foreign troops withdraw after 20 years.
More than 1,000 Afghan government troops reportedly fled into Tajikistan earlier this week as the Taliban seized dozens of districts in the past two months.
In an appeal to the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), which includes Russia and five other ex-Soviet states, a Tajik official said his country could not handle the instability at its border without external assistance, Reuters said.
“Given the current situation in the region, as well as the remoteness and mountainous terrain of some parts of the border with Afghanistan, dealing with this challenge on our own seems difficult,” the RIA news agency quoted Hasan Sultonov, the Tajik representative at CSTO, as saying.
Sultonov’s comments came after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was ready to use its military base in Tajikistan, one of its biggest abroad, to ensure the security of its allies in the region.
“We are closely watching what is happening in Afghanistan where the situation has a tendency to swiftly deteriorate including against the backdrop of the hasty exit of American and other NATO troops,” Lavrov said.
“We will do everything we can, including using the capabilities of the Russian military base on Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan, to prevent any aggressive impulses towards our allies,” Lavrov said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday told Emomali Rahmon, the president of Tajikistan, that Moscow would help the impoverished former Soviet republic contend with the fallout from NATO’s exit from neighbouring Afghanistan if needed.
Rahmon has ordered the mobilisation of 20,000 military reservists to bolster his country’s border with Afghanistan.
Also, Russia is prepared to activate a military base in Tajikistan against advancing Taliban forces as US troops finalise their pullout from Afghanistan, its top diplomat said Wednesday.
Tajikistan is host to more than 6,000 Russian servicemen deployed to the Russian Ground Forces’ 201st military base, one of Russia’s few military sites on foreign soil.
