Border control training under way

Efforts to improve border control along the Uzbek/Afghan border got under way on Monday, with the start of a two-week training course organised by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). "Such training will prove instrumental in the possible reopening of the border, which could happen in the mid- and long-term future," Marie-Carin von Gumppenberg, a political officer for the OSCE, told IRIN from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, noting this would depend on security conditions in the area. As part of the exercise, running from 20 October until 31 October, guards, police officers and customs officials from both countries gathered in the southern Uzbek border town of Termez, once one of the most important places for transporting humanitarian assistance into northern Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime in November 2001. This year, emphasis is being placed on travel documentation verification and profiling, as well as on the interrogation of people seeking to cross the border. The programme, organised jointly by the OSCE Secretariat's Conflict Prevention Centre and the OSCE Centre in Tashkent, is a follow-up to the 2002 project: "Combating Trafficking of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) through Border Management Assistance". That project involved an initial training course, jointly organised in Termez in November by the OSCE and the UN, was aimed at assisting Tashkent to re-establish cross-border movement and at enhancing the country's capacity to respond to the trafficking of SALW. And while normalisation of border crossings along the 137 km-long frontier appears a long way off, promoting internal cooperation between Uzbek border, customs and police authorities, as well as that between Afghan and Uzbek officials, could well expedite the process. At the moment, the single crossing-point between the two Central Asian states remains essentially closed except for diplomatic and humanitarian aid, as well as some trucks carrying food into Afghanistan and returning empty. "It's not huge traffic," the OSCE official said, describing the current volume of traffic between the two states. Asked when she anticipated a full normalisation of bilateral border activities, she stated: "There is no clear status yet from either the Uzbek or Afghan side." Significantly for Afghanistan, which became an OSCE Partner for Cooperation in April, this is the first time that the country has taken part in an OSCE activity. "This is the first offer of integrating Afghanistan into the OSCE structure," von Gumppenberg said, adding it was also the first time that the Afghans and Uzbeks were participating together in such training.