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RUSSIAN BORDER GUARDS SHARING EXPERIENCE WITH TAJIK COLLEAGUES

RIA Novosti

DUSHANBE, March 16 (RIA Novosti) - The officers of the Border Directorate of Russia's FSB will hold a 40-day training methods conference for the commandants of border offices and heads of border stations of the Border Committee of Tajikistan. The conference will be held at the Pyandzh border group on the Tajik-Afghan border on March 16-18.

The goal of the conference is to instruct the Tajik colleagues in methods employed by commanders of border stations and to elaborate common attitudes to the organization of border protection. The heads of departments and services of the FSB's Border Directorate will make reports, show training films, and hold training sessions, including on the rules and procedure for organizing interaction with the units of the Russian military base set up on the basis of the 201st Russian Motorized Rifle Division in the Tajik capital.

The training sessions will be held at border stations and posts and firing ranges. The conference is held within the bilateral agreement on border cooperation, signed by President Vladimir Putin and President Emomali Rakhmonov in Dushanbe on October 16, 2004. Under it, Russian border guards continue to help train personnel for the Border Committee of Tajikistan.

The Moscow border group will be turned over to Tajikistan in the period from this spring and until year-end and will be crowned with the transfer of the Pyandzh group to Tajikistan's control by summer 2006.

According to the above agreement, the Russian border guards will leave to their Tajik colleagues all movable property, including military hardware and munitions, necessary for protecting the border. Alexander Mikhailov, deputy director of the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia, had said that the Russian security services were devising measures that would preclude the growth of drug traffic after the pullout of Russian border guards.

The Tajik-Afghan border has been for a long time one of the most difficult in the CIS, as the main drug routes from central Asia (above all Afghanistan) to Russia and on to Western Europe pass across it. Groups of Islamic militants also crossed into Tajikistan from Afghanistan and many Russian border guards died in battles against them.

The situation with the protection of the Tajik-Afghan border started changing in 2001, when the Taliban regime was toppled in Kabul and US and NATO troops appeared in the region. These troops were also deployed in Tajikistan as part of the anti-terrorist operation. Soon after that, the Dushanbe authorities said they no longer needed the services of the Russian border guards and would protect their border without them.