200 Kyrgyz citizens may have trained in Al-Qaeda camps, official says

Osh faces threats from militant groups pushed northwards in Afghanistan and Tajikistan

Πηγή: Centralasianewswire
Tuesday, July 26, 2011


The security of the southern Kyrgyz province of Osh is still under threat from external groups, a high-ranking member of the Kyrgyz interior ministry said on Tuesday.

Southern Kyrgyzstan is under increasing pressure as militant groups from other countries, namely Tajikistan and further south, Afghanistan, the chief of the Internal Affairs Department said.

“As a result of the ongoing military operations by coalition forces in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, intelligence operations against the gangs, these gangs groups are displaced to the north of these countries, more and more closer to the southern borders of Kyrgyzstan,” the semi-official Kabar.kg reported Marat Orozbaev as saying during a working board of the mayor in southern city Osh.

“Also, there is preliminary information of national security of our country and Afghanistan that some 200 Kyrgyz citizens are in the territory of that state, and perhaps they are trained in special Al-Qaeda camps,” he said.

“These individuals presumably are relatives of the victims in last year’s June events in southern Kyrgyzstan. Yielding to extremist appeals, they went to Russia and then came to Afghanistan.”

The security official said it was very difficult to track down which Kyrgyz citizens spent time in Afghanistan as nearly 300,000 Kyrgyz citizens now live in Russia.