MOSCOW, 8 February (BelTA) – The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) suggests launching an anti-IS operation Naemnik (Mercenary), CSTO Deputy Secretary General Valery Semerikov told a press conference in Moscow on 8 February, BelTA has learned.
“In 2017, we analyzed the situation and saw that IS militants started fleeing Syria to the territories they came from and to other places. Therefore we offered our member states to conduct the Naemnik operation,” the CSTO deputy secretary general noted.
According to Valery Semerikov, the results of this operation will help understand the real state of things and find out how many IS militants fled to the countries in the CSTO's zone of responsibility.
In his words, around 150 people who were members of terrorist groups in Syria returned to Tajikistan. There is no complete data available on this topic, however, he underlined.
“In order to understand the scale of the threat, we offered to undertake an operation Naemnik to clarify some points such as the IS' losses and gains, the people engaged, and ways to counter them,” Valery Semerikov said.
The concept of the operation is about to be agreed upon, the deputy secretary general noted. He did not rule out that the operation can take place this year.
Valery Semerikov also recalled that the CSTO regularly arranges various operations to counter certain threats. In particular, over 360 tonnes of drugs have been seized since the Kanal anti-drug operation was launched 11 years ago. Taking part in the operation are CSTO member states, European countries, the USA, Iran, Afghanistan, and others – a total of 22 countries.
During the Nelegal operation in 2017, special forces and law enforcement agencies apprehended around 1,400 internationally wanted persons. Last year, heads of the CSTO member states decided to give Nelegal the status of an ongoing operation in the CSTO.
Furthermore, the Proxy operation in the CSTO territory helped detect more than 23,000 information resources posing a threat to collective security.
