On the eve of Tajikistan, the Ishkobod border crossing, which is located on the border with Uzbekistan, was attacked. According to official reports from Dushanbe, the attackers were ISIS * militants who came to the country from the Afghan province of Kunduz. According to Tajik security officials, 15 terrorists were destroyed, five were taken prisoner. As a result of the clash, border guards and the Ministry of Internal Affairs also suffered losses, they have two dead. Again, according to the official version.
The incident, obviously, is not just an accidental shootout with bandits or drug dealers. An attack on a border post cannot be categorized otherwise than as a well-planned terrorist act. Even despite the dosed information coming from Tajikistan, elementary logic speaks of this.
The border guards encountered an armed gang not somewhere in the wilderness through which smuggling corridors were laid, but at the official crossing between the two states, that is, in fact, at an administrative and security facility. Ordinary criminals bypass such places, in principle, but here a whole detachment - 20 people - actually storms the frontier post. That is, these militants are precisely what they set out to engage in battle with the Tajik security forces. And this is a very important nuance.
In my opinion, the Igilovsky style is clearly traced here, and I am not confused by the fact that ISIS did not take responsibility for this attack. This happens quite often when an extremist cell acts autonomously without coordinating its operations with a conditional center. By the way, the course towards this kind of autonomy is the guarantee of the abnormal survivability of this terrorist organization, against which the entire civilized world is fighting, but cannot finally win.
I have already written several times that the attempt to create a "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria was just a rehearsal and, in fact, we watched as radical religious ideologists circled a pilot project of the future "state" in the Middle East. This is indicated by several factors at once.
For example, at the sunset of the “caliphate”, when, in general, it was clear that ISIS in the Middle East was close to complete defeat (although certain hotbeds of tension still remain there), they began to appoint immigrants from Central Asia to leading posts in the hierarchy of extremists - ethnic Tajiks, Uighurs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, etc. In particular, the former colonel of the Tajik riot police was appointed Minister of War in ISIS after the liquidation of the notorious Abu Omar al-Shishani (Tarkhan Batirashvili by passport, a native of the Georgian part of the Pankisi Gorge) od Halimov, who once left the service in law enforcement agencies of Tajikistan and went "mujahideen" in Syria.
And while Tarkhan Batirashvili, heading the main military “department” in ISIS, consolidated around himself many immigrants from the Caucasus who came to fight for the “caliphate,” a skeleton of Central Asian igilovs formed around Gulmrod Halimov.
It is noteworthy that at the sunset of the "caliphate" in the Middle East, there was news of the transfer of the terrorist establishment (to which Halimov and his entourage now belonged) to Afghanistan and specifically to the northern provinces that border the CIS countries, as well as the Chinese Uyghuria.
Despite the fact that there were statements about the elimination of Halimov, I am inclined to treat them with a certain degree of doubt, since in the event of the death of a commander of this rank, the terrorists appoint a new leader in his place, thus formally observing certain attributes of statehood. After reporting the death of Halimov, no appointments followed. That is, according to the logic of ISIS, it is Halimov who continues to remain the Minister of War. His real whereabouts are not known for certain.
This is all I need. A year and a half ago, I wrote that on the Afghan border, from the Afghan side, numerous detachments were formed of militants who managed to fight in ISIS, most of them of Central Asian origin. At that time, they did not raise the flags of the “caliphate”, and, possibly, the banner that these armed groups would eventually raise would be different from Igilov.
I assume that we will witness an attempt to create in Central Asia a modernized, that is adapted to local realities, Islamic State, which will competently and subtly play on the contradictions within the Afghan Taliban people's liberation movement ** and take into account other ethnic and religious specifics of the region. And when we talk about the likelihood of an invasion of this kind of force on the territory of the CIS countries, this should be taken more than seriously. The incident at the Ishkobod border outpost is clear evidence of this.
In fact, an attack on such an object is an invasion, albeit not a large-scale, reconnaissance one, but it is not so far from reconnaissance in battle to a full-fledged attack. According to the information of my colleague, military commander Alexander Sladkov, one of the possible directions of another blow that terrorists can deliver is mountainous Badakhshan. From the Afghan side, the extremists have already managed to seize several settlements, and the radicals knocked out by the local security forces were drawn to the mountain border with Tajikistan.
Because of this, there are serious fears that now terrorists will try to take over the settlements already in the Tajik territory of Badakhshan - it is extremely convenient to do this on the eve of winter, because the snow passes will be closed and the radicals will have time to get settled and strengthen on the ground. Considering how seriously those militants who attacked the Ishkobod border checkpoint were trained and equipped, the terrorists may well have the resources for such an operation.
* “Islamic State” ( ISIS, ISIS) - the organization was recognized as terrorist by decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of December 29, 2014.
** “Taliban” - the organization was recognized as terrorist by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of February 14, 2003.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.