Terrorists affiliated with various groups have been noted along the border with Tajikistan and inside the Afghan soil, it has been reported.

The issue was shared by a top-rank security official from Tajikistan during a session of the Council of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Border Forces Commanders, according to Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency.

Sherali Khairulloyev, national security aide to Tajikistan’s President, said one of the biggest tasks today was to prevent the transformation of Central Asian countries into a center of geopolitical confrontation of the world’s largest powers at a time when the threat of international terrorism was getting bigger from one day to another.

Khairulloyev warned that the militants were clearly seeking to create hotbeds of tensions and seize state power in the regional nations through the use of force.

He said this would be happening along Afghanistan’s border with CIS member-states, the length of which is 2,340 km.

“If the countries and secret services that have keen interest in the Islamic Caliphate project try and implement it through Afghanistan, the zone of political instability will then protrude to the CIS and China.”

In the meantime, Rajabali Rakhmonali, First Deputy Chief of Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security, Commander of Border Troops, said about 1,500 militants had been concentrated on the opposite side of the border.

Citing official data on militants number within the Afghan soil, Rakhmonali, said “Operative information suggests the militants are mostly concentrated in Dashti Archi and Imam Saheb districts of Konduz province.”

“The ranks of the militants include members of Taliban, Al Qaida, Islamic State, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and Ansarullo organization,” Rakhmonali said adding that combat actions and tensions continued unabated in the Afghan provinces of Takhar, Konduz and Badakhshan.

Meanwhile, chief of Uzbekistan’s border troops, Nasirbek Usmanbekov, said certain numbers of militants in the parts of Afghanistan adjoining border with Uzbekistan were also noted.

Citing data provided by secret services, Usmanbekov, said “The data we have indicates a certain concentration of militant forces but not in the quantities as in the vicinity of the Tajikistani-Afghan border,” he said. “Their concentration near our borders is much, much smaller and our border-guard units have enough strength to repel possible strikes from the Afghan territory.”