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| Fears of Swat operation spillover in Tajikistan |
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
TAVILDARA, Tajikistan: A secretive military operation has raised fears that fighters fleeing Pakistan and Afghanistan may be slipping into Tajikistan, threatening a fragile peace in the ex-Soviet state.
Since May, Tajik security forces have set up a tight security cordon and engaged in gunbattles with armed groups in an area close to the Afghan border.Officials call it a counter-narcotics operation, but diplomats and residents at the foot of the soaring Pamir Mountains fear the government have been battling insurgents, possibly fighters linked to the Taliban.
“We know that something has happened, that most probably it involves the people who have been mentioned, and that it is probably a spillover from the Swat Valley operations,” a senior Western diplomat said.
Fighting between the Taliban militants and the Pakistan Army in the Swat Valley had already raised concerns that militants with ethnic ties to ex-Soviet Central Asia could seek refuge inside Tajikistan.
Groups like the IMU — designated a terrorist organisation by Washington — were pushed into Afghanistan after a 1997 peace deal ended the civil war. But in the recent weeks, signs have appeared suggesting that the militants are back.
The nearby town of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, after years of relative stability following the 2001 US-led invasion, has seen a surge of violence believed to be Taliban fuelled.And the Tajik government said on Saturday that it detained five ethnic Chechen Russians, who were selling drugs to fund militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan — a rare admission of the presence of foreign fighters.
A senior US official told AFP that Washington was closely monitoring the outflow of militants since the beginning of the Swat operations. “I think we are seeing, looking globally, that Al-Qaeda is relocating its forces into the rest of the world,” he said.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
