"Dizzy with success" - the Afghan version
As strange as it may seem, but quite a few of our readers, being embraced by anti-NATO sentiments, were very excited about the recent successes of the Islamic militants of the Taliban movement (forbidden in the Russian Federation) in their actions against coalition forces in Afghanistan.
However, the events that followed immediately showed who is who, since the Taliban, apparently feeling “dizzy with success,” attacked Tajikistan’s borders.
14 August 2018, according to Sputnik-Tajikistan news agency, the Oykhonim district and the checkpoint of the same name were seized by radical supporters of the Taliban movement. Despite the heroic resistance of the border garrison of the Afghan government forces, who lost at least 10 people killed, the outpost fell.
This territory is located right across the Pyanj River, so well remembered by the soldiers of the Soviet group of troops during the Afghan war 1979-1989, and Russian soldiers, who served there earlier, and continue to defend these distant approaches to our borders. Oikhonam district with the same-named checkpoint is located directly opposite the village of Kokul (Farkhor district of Tajikistan) and Dushanbe is approximately 300 km to the north.
Despite the fact that the tradition of barter in this place has more than one thousand years, there is no bridge between the Afghan checkpoint Oyhonim and the Tajik checkpoint Kokul, and the transportation of goods through the Pyanjk has long been carried out on two barges. In fact, this is exactly what unexpectedly stopped for all that a huge detachment of "Taliban" appeared, which would very likely have crushed the Tajik frontier post in the same way as before the outpost of the Afghan government forces.
So far, one of the results of the recent events in that area was the beginning of the implementation of the plan of construction of the bridge, which would connect the Tajik Farkhor district of the Khailon region and the Afghan county of Okhonim Tahor province (Takhar), due to the deterioration of the situation in the border area, previously postponed for spring 2019 of the year.
Despite the fact that after a few days, the government forces of Afghanistan regained control of the Oikhonim outpost (or, according to some, the Taliban simply left after insignificant resistance), until the work of the checkpoint on either the Afghan or the Tajik side was resumed.
But the Afghan Islamists did not stop there. On Saturday 25 August 2018, a few days after the above attack, the Niva car, which was traveling with Tajik citizens along the border in the same Farkhor district, was fired upon weapons. As a result of this shelling, two employees of the border forestry were killed, including the control of the border strip, Amirhon Saidov (53) and Davlat Sangakov (50 l.), And the third passenger, Safarhon Rakhmonov, was injured.
The attack, carried out from the Afghan side of the border, is suspected of either members of the Taliban movement or local drug traffickers associated with Islamists.
But not only this shelling created a problem in this region. Worst of all, at the same time as the above-described attack, a reconnaissance and sabotage group of Afghan militants crossed Pyanj and entered the territory of Tajikistan. At present, the forces of the border detachment "Hamadoni" have been put forward to search for and destroy it.
The next event was a somewhat mysterious episode. According to Afghan news agencies, on August 26, according to a large group of militants discovered by a Tajik border patrol, concentrating on the Afghan border in the breakthrough zone of their forward patrol, an unidentified plane from the Tajik or Russian forces launched a bomb-assault strike.
So far, the authorities in Dushanbe have denied the information that air strikes were inflicted by the Air Force of Tajikistan. In a semi-official statement of the incident, the representative of the State Committee for National Security of Tajikistan reports the following: “We do not have the right to apply air strikes on the territory of another state. If the need arises for this, then the CSTO headquarters will be convened first, at which the issue of a force strike is considered. And only after lengthy consultations of the military departments of the Allied Powers can such a decision be made. ” In the same way, Moscow also declared its innocence to the strike.
The outcome of such aggressive actions by the Taliban in relation to neighboring countries not participating in the war on the territory of Afghanistan was to reveal the essence of this ultra-orthodox Islamic movement and the destruction of certain illusions. As a result of this, 27 on August 2018 in Moscow hosted a meeting of the ambassador of the official Kabul government, Abdul Kuchaya, with the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Igor Morgulov, which resulted in the Russian Foreign Ministry announcing the cancellation of consultations on the issue of Afghanistan on the same day, which would start on September 4 . Earlier, our Foreign Ministry announced the possible participation of both official Kabul and Taliban supporters in these negotiations if both sides expressly declared their desire to establish peace in this long-suffering land.
By such actions, the "Taliban" (controlling, according to various estimates, from 40 to 70% of the territory of Afghanistan) demonstrated to the world community their difficulty as a negotiable party in negotiations on the fate of this country. To all appearances, Islamist militants, accustomed only to violence, are unlikely to aspire to become respectable peasants or honest and professional officials. After all, their economic basis is based on the total ultraradical propaganda of Islamism, the many years of expropriation of the labor of others, and the constant conduct of “operations of the gazavat against kafir and munafiqs” in order to justify various financial grants received from a number of countries.
Thus, the recent series of failures of the Afghan government forces (the peak of which was the fall of the Faryab base, despite the fact that the base in Ghazni was barely preserved by American forces) provoked the Taliban to external aggression. Their choice fell on Tajikistan, as the country which is the weakest, in their opinion, militarily, and at the same time “concluded an alliance with the regime of the Russian kyafir”. Thus, the illusory ideas of the possibility of a relatively safe coexistence of Central Asian states alongside the regime of Islamic militarized ultra-Orthodox were demonstrated.
Despite the fact that while official Dushanbe and Moscow deny a possible airstrike on the accumulation of “Gazavatists” in Afghanistan, we should not forget that the borders of Tajikistan are reliably covered not only by its own forces, but also by the Russian units of the 201 base.
At the same time, we note that the Russian VKS grouping includes both UAVs intended for operations in mountainous terrain and Su-25 attack aircraft, as well as Mi-24P and Mi-8MTV attack helicopters. Moreover, after the conclusion of a new agreement on the stay of the Russian Armed Forces on the territory of the Republic of Tajikistan in 2012, the base structure of our units there, except Dushanbe, in 2015 was added (instead of Kulyab) the base in Kurgan-Tyube (for those not in the course, from 2018 - this is already the city of Bokhtar), as well as the air base of the helicopter group in Aini (near the city of Gissar).
Also, the ideologues and commanders of the "Taliban" should be taken into account, if they still decide on a full-scale invasion of the territory of Tajikistan, that only Russia and only in 2005-2010. donated to this state almost 14.000 units. light and medium weapons, as well as 1055 units. military equipment (from which 317 units are armored units). That is, at least, even without taking into account the factor of the presence of the Russian Armed Forces, the Tajik army is currently a very formidable force, fully capable of resisting the aggression of the Afghan Islamists.
Moreover, it is extremely strange that such incomprehensible aggressive actions of the “Taliban” are precisely on the eve of the talks in Moscow. This is all the more strange because, according to some data, the secret services of the Central Asian states have their own and very old emergency channels with Afghan militants, both at the level of local commanders and at the level of the Qatari representative of the Taliban movement.
Thus, against the background of recent events on the Afghan-Tajik border, one sees either the absolute inadequacy of the supporters of this movement and, consequently, the impossibility of using them as a negotiable party to negotiations, or full control by their external players who do not benefit the world in Afghanistan (for example, Pakistan, Iran, the Gulf countries or China).
However, the events that followed immediately showed who is who, since the Taliban, apparently feeling “dizzy with success,” attacked Tajikistan’s borders.
14 August 2018, according to Sputnik-Tajikistan news agency, the Oykhonim district and the checkpoint of the same name were seized by radical supporters of the Taliban movement. Despite the heroic resistance of the border garrison of the Afghan government forces, who lost at least 10 people killed, the outpost fell.
This territory is located right across the Pyanj River, so well remembered by the soldiers of the Soviet group of troops during the Afghan war 1979-1989, and Russian soldiers, who served there earlier, and continue to defend these distant approaches to our borders. Oikhonam district with the same-named checkpoint is located directly opposite the village of Kokul (Farkhor district of Tajikistan) and Dushanbe is approximately 300 km to the north.
Despite the fact that the tradition of barter in this place has more than one thousand years, there is no bridge between the Afghan checkpoint Oyhonim and the Tajik checkpoint Kokul, and the transportation of goods through the Pyanjk has long been carried out on two barges. In fact, this is exactly what unexpectedly stopped for all that a huge detachment of "Taliban" appeared, which would very likely have crushed the Tajik frontier post in the same way as before the outpost of the Afghan government forces.
So far, one of the results of the recent events in that area was the beginning of the implementation of the plan of construction of the bridge, which would connect the Tajik Farkhor district of the Khailon region and the Afghan county of Okhonim Tahor province (Takhar), due to the deterioration of the situation in the border area, previously postponed for spring 2019 of the year.
Despite the fact that after a few days, the government forces of Afghanistan regained control of the Oikhonim outpost (or, according to some, the Taliban simply left after insignificant resistance), until the work of the checkpoint on either the Afghan or the Tajik side was resumed.
But the Afghan Islamists did not stop there. On Saturday 25 August 2018, a few days after the above attack, the Niva car, which was traveling with Tajik citizens along the border in the same Farkhor district, was fired upon weapons. As a result of this shelling, two employees of the border forestry were killed, including the control of the border strip, Amirhon Saidov (53) and Davlat Sangakov (50 l.), And the third passenger, Safarhon Rakhmonov, was injured.
The attack, carried out from the Afghan side of the border, is suspected of either members of the Taliban movement or local drug traffickers associated with Islamists.
But not only this shelling created a problem in this region. Worst of all, at the same time as the above-described attack, a reconnaissance and sabotage group of Afghan militants crossed Pyanj and entered the territory of Tajikistan. At present, the forces of the border detachment "Hamadoni" have been put forward to search for and destroy it.
The next event was a somewhat mysterious episode. According to Afghan news agencies, on August 26, according to a large group of militants discovered by a Tajik border patrol, concentrating on the Afghan border in the breakthrough zone of their forward patrol, an unidentified plane from the Tajik or Russian forces launched a bomb-assault strike.
So far, the authorities in Dushanbe have denied the information that air strikes were inflicted by the Air Force of Tajikistan. In a semi-official statement of the incident, the representative of the State Committee for National Security of Tajikistan reports the following: “We do not have the right to apply air strikes on the territory of another state. If the need arises for this, then the CSTO headquarters will be convened first, at which the issue of a force strike is considered. And only after lengthy consultations of the military departments of the Allied Powers can such a decision be made. ” In the same way, Moscow also declared its innocence to the strike.
The outcome of such aggressive actions by the Taliban in relation to neighboring countries not participating in the war on the territory of Afghanistan was to reveal the essence of this ultra-orthodox Islamic movement and the destruction of certain illusions. As a result of this, 27 on August 2018 in Moscow hosted a meeting of the ambassador of the official Kabul government, Abdul Kuchaya, with the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Igor Morgulov, which resulted in the Russian Foreign Ministry announcing the cancellation of consultations on the issue of Afghanistan on the same day, which would start on September 4 . Earlier, our Foreign Ministry announced the possible participation of both official Kabul and Taliban supporters in these negotiations if both sides expressly declared their desire to establish peace in this long-suffering land.
By such actions, the "Taliban" (controlling, according to various estimates, from 40 to 70% of the territory of Afghanistan) demonstrated to the world community their difficulty as a negotiable party in negotiations on the fate of this country. To all appearances, Islamist militants, accustomed only to violence, are unlikely to aspire to become respectable peasants or honest and professional officials. After all, their economic basis is based on the total ultraradical propaganda of Islamism, the many years of expropriation of the labor of others, and the constant conduct of “operations of the gazavat against kafir and munafiqs” in order to justify various financial grants received from a number of countries.
Thus, the recent series of failures of the Afghan government forces (the peak of which was the fall of the Faryab base, despite the fact that the base in Ghazni was barely preserved by American forces) provoked the Taliban to external aggression. Their choice fell on Tajikistan, as the country which is the weakest, in their opinion, militarily, and at the same time “concluded an alliance with the regime of the Russian kyafir”. Thus, the illusory ideas of the possibility of a relatively safe coexistence of Central Asian states alongside the regime of Islamic militarized ultra-Orthodox were demonstrated.
Despite the fact that while official Dushanbe and Moscow deny a possible airstrike on the accumulation of “Gazavatists” in Afghanistan, we should not forget that the borders of Tajikistan are reliably covered not only by its own forces, but also by the Russian units of the 201 base.
At the same time, we note that the Russian VKS grouping includes both UAVs intended for operations in mountainous terrain and Su-25 attack aircraft, as well as Mi-24P and Mi-8MTV attack helicopters. Moreover, after the conclusion of a new agreement on the stay of the Russian Armed Forces on the territory of the Republic of Tajikistan in 2012, the base structure of our units there, except Dushanbe, in 2015 was added (instead of Kulyab) the base in Kurgan-Tyube (for those not in the course, from 2018 - this is already the city of Bokhtar), as well as the air base of the helicopter group in Aini (near the city of Gissar).
Also, the ideologues and commanders of the "Taliban" should be taken into account, if they still decide on a full-scale invasion of the territory of Tajikistan, that only Russia and only in 2005-2010. donated to this state almost 14.000 units. light and medium weapons, as well as 1055 units. military equipment (from which 317 units are armored units). That is, at least, even without taking into account the factor of the presence of the Russian Armed Forces, the Tajik army is currently a very formidable force, fully capable of resisting the aggression of the Afghan Islamists.
Moreover, it is extremely strange that such incomprehensible aggressive actions of the “Taliban” are precisely on the eve of the talks in Moscow. This is all the more strange because, according to some data, the secret services of the Central Asian states have their own and very old emergency channels with Afghan militants, both at the level of local commanders and at the level of the Qatari representative of the Taliban movement.
Thus, against the background of recent events on the Afghan-Tajik border, one sees either the absolute inadequacy of the supporters of this movement and, consequently, the impossibility of using them as a negotiable party to negotiations, or full control by their external players who do not benefit the world in Afghanistan (for example, Pakistan, Iran, the Gulf countries or China).
Information