The rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan...
p>"We don"t predict any military conflict in CSTO member-states any time soon," Nikolai Bordyuzha said in an interview with a Tajik newspaper."However, the situation in Afghanistan, which borders on CSTO members Tajikistan and Uzbekistan is, I repeat, very strained and dangerous," he said.
The CSTO also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Russia"s security strategy until 2020 envisions the CSTO as "a key mechanism to counter regional military challenges and threats."
Russia backed the 2001 U.S.-led military operation in Afghanistan to topple the radical Islamic Taliban. But in the past few years, Russia has grown increasingly alarmed about political instability in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has regained influence, defying in the process the Western-backed government and the presence of a powerful international force.
The Kremlin says that apart from the renewed threat from radical Islam, instability in Afghanistan has led to the sharp
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