MINSK, 9 September (BelTA) - The events in Afghanistan are creating more transnational challenges and threats, State Secretary of the Belarusian Security Council Aleksandr Volfovich said in an interview with the SB. Belarus Segodnya newspaper, BelTA has learned.
“The situation in Afghanistan is creating a true hotbed of regional instability, which, given the radical contradictions between the major centers of power, their reluctance to adopt coordinated foreign policy decisions and the incapacity of the international deterrence and security systems, can cause a new wave of global tensions and grow into a large-scale military conflict. Apart from that, the events in Afghanistan are creating more transnational challenges and threats associated with terrorism, extremism, illicit trafficking in drugs, weapons and illegal migration,” Aleksandr Volfovich said.
Taking into account their traditional European vector, these emerging risks directly affect the interests of Belarus and require the national security system to take appropriate preventive measures.
“First of all, these risks include a possible increase in the flow of Afghan refugees to the EU countries and their ‘squeezing out' into Belarus with a further deterioration of the foreign policy background, legalization of members of terrorist groups in the Eastern European region, recruitment of Belarusian citizens into radical Islamist groups, increased circulation of criminal instrumentalities in the country,” Aleksandr Volfovich emphasized. “Since the hotbed of instability is in close vicinity of the CSTO area of responsibility, its member states need a clear, unified, effective plan of action to respond to the crisis. Providing the situation aggravates further and grows more unpredictable, the CSTO may, among other things, take a decision to deploy military contingents in Tajikistan to protect the Tajik-Afghan border as part of the CSTO Collective Forces of Rapid Deployment of the Central Asian region and the CSTO Collective Rapid Deployment Forces. In these circumstances, additional efforts should be made to strengthen the diplomatic and military-political relations within the framework of the Union State, the CSTO, the SCO, and also with other foreign partners in a bilateral format."
