MOSCOW (Dispatches) –
Russia has accused the United States of seeking to use terrorists in Afghanistan to destabilize the entire Central Asia region.
“Afghanistan remains a hotbed of instability,” Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu says, Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
“The main threat comes from illegal armed groups that have significantly strengthened their positions in that country after the Taliban came to power,” he added.
Shoigu was addressing a meeting of the defense chiefs of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), an intergovernmental military alliance of Eurasian states, in the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
“We believe that the United States intends to use the potential of these terrorist organizations to destabilize the situation in the region,” the Russian official remarked. “For this purpose, the redeployment of fighters from the controlled gangs in the Middle East to Afghanistan has been organized,” he added.
The Taliban rose to power in Afghanistan following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country in 2020. Ever since, the group has been hanging firmly onto power, preventing the formation of an inclusive government hailing from Afghanistan’s all political factions and ethnicities.
Over the past years, the United States has also been accused by many regional officials of being engaged in transferring terrorists belonging to the Daesh terror outfit and other terrorist groups from Iraq and Syria, where the terrorists have suffered defeat, to various other regional countries.
The Russian official, meanwhile, warned that the terrorists redeployed to Afghanistan in such a manner by Washington could start marking their way into Afghanistan’s neighboring countries.
“In the future, their infiltration into neighboring countries is possible for committing terrorist acts,” Shoigu said.
“Under these conditions, we believe it is important to coordinate efforts on the Afghan track and to pay due attention to joint exercises - both bilateral and multilateral,” he concluded.