Staunton, April 20 – A large portion
of the Afghanistan province adjoining Turkmenistan has fallen under the control
of Taliban militants with links to the IS and IMU, according to Kabul security officials,
a development that presents a serious security challenge to Ashgabat because
the IS militants have not been shy about saying that it is among their targets.
Fathulla Qaisar, who represents the
region in the Afghanistan national parliament, said at the end of last week that
the security situation in Faryab is so bad already that the entire province may
soon be lost to Kabul, a view he said was shared by Afghan security and
military leaders (news.tj/ru/news/boeviki-afganistana-usilivayut-svoe-vliyanie-v-severnykh-raionakh-granichashchikh-s-turkmenista, azathabar.com/content/article/26957493.html, and
Eighty percent of the border
province is already in the hands of militants, Qaisar said, and Taliban
activists are using scare tactics to extract money and submission from the
population. Many officials and their families are already cooperating, and some
officials have already gone over to the radicals, who are in a position to
decide whether they can retain their jobs.
Qaisar added in what must be
especially worrisome for Turkmenistan and other Central Asian states that “the
militants have gathered extremists” from throughout the region, including the
Islamic State and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, whose goals are hardly
limited to that province or even to Afghanistan as a whole.
The deputy said that no one should be
fooled into thinking thhe IS and the Taliban are distinct groups with differing
agendas. They have “one and the same
ideology. Today they may raise black flags [of IS] and tomorrow again white
ones [of the Taliban].” But many in
Kabul prefer to ignore that reality.
“That is a big error because there
are no essential differences between the Taliban and the radicals from the
Islamic State,” he added, and Qaisar concluded by observing that the countries of
Central Asia and especially of neighboring Turkmenistan should begin
cooperating with Kabul to ensure their own security.
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