Regular anti-terrorist operations begin in border area

Uzbek security forces have started regular anti-terrorist operations in the Tashkent border region to prevent possible attacks there, a senior police official told AFP on Thursday. Sharaf Rasulov, head of the Tashkent border police, said the operations concentrated on “checking areas in the mountains near the border with Tajikistan”. The Uzbek authorities are concerned with incursions by Muslim fundamentalists who are allegedly intent on destabilising the government of Islam Karimov. According to the Uzbek authorities, some 100 Islamic rebels who had been trained in Afghanistan and had crossed over from Tajikistan, killed four Uzbek troops in the Bostanlyk district last August, it was reported. The Economist Intelligence Unit reported on Thursday that it was “likely that IMU incursions would be carried out annually” over the next year, in light of the Taliban’s refusal to extradite two prominent leaders of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Both men had been sentenced to death in absentia by an Uzbek court in November. On a related note, relations with the Kyrgyz Republic, which had improved after both countries co-operated in combating IMU rebels last year, came under strain when Uzbekistan’s unilateral decision to lay land mines along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border resulted in the deaths of several Kyrgyz civilians, it said.