After a tip-off by U.S. intelligence officials and only a few hours left Austrian police made swift arrests. The plot seems too bizarre not to be true. Abul Baraa, aka Ahmad Armih, the German based hate-preacher in Berlin radicalized via Tik-tok or Istagram a 19-year Beran A. to swear the oath of alliance to the Islamic State. 

U.S. officials have confirmed their role in identifying a suspected terrorist plot planned for a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna this weekend. During a Friday briefing, White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby said the U.S. provided information to Austrian authorities, who have made several arrests in relation to the alleged foiled attack.

The plan was to take a car, pack it full of explosives and drive it to the Vienna venue of the Ernst Happel stadium at the time packed with 65,000 “Swifties” and detonate the car bomb causing mass casualties. Bomb-making instructions and machetes were also found.

The Heeresnachrichtenamt got the tip-off and passing it on to the newly reconstituted Directorate of State Security and Intelligence (DNS) who swung into action. The DNS who are still fighting the ghosts of scandals took over from the foreign intelligence service. 

Breaking the whatsapp application police worked out the communication traffic, and Beran A. and Luca were arrested in Ternitz, a small village in the south of Vienna. Three other suspects were detained. Beran A., who lived still in the residence of his parents was partly assembling the bomb in the garage of his parents’ residence when police moved in. 

The shock of the planned attack was felt by the “Swifties”, the countless fans of the American pop legend. On the back of the pro-Islamic demonstrations German agitation is manifested. Although current media coverage does not bring the undercurrent of Germany laws will be replaced by Sharia law into the debate terror experts foresee a radicalization of youth. “We will wait and see”, says one expert contacted. “Dissatisfaction is expressed by knowing what we don’t want but being unclear what we want”, says another expert. Roughly 200,000 people were scheduled to attend the sold-out Vienna shows. 

The Alpen republic struggles with online monitoring since the laws of the country do not permit surveillance. Political parties argue that the laws of the country must be changed. 

The post Islamic State does not like Taylor Swift. Austrian police arrests plotters appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Fast forward to December and not only is 2023 likely to pass without major incidents on the border, but both sides are talking with increased optimism about seemingly concrete progress made in delimitation, with Japarov saying recently that the border might be fully agreed upon by the spring.

That is a significant change in tone.

Tokon Mamytov, a former deputy prime minister and security council secretary in Kyrgyzstan, told RFE/RL that the two governments deserve credit for “overhauling the template” in border talks.

If talks had traditionally become stuck on fixations with different Soviet-era maps — Tajikistan’s preferred boundaries date back to the 1920s while Kyrgyzstan’s are from the 1950s — now there is a “new approach” from the bilateral commission working on delimitation, Mamytov argued.

“They go to the place and look at the border. They ask people who live there about facts on the ground. In this way, the intergovernmental commission is turning agreements between the two heads of states into a reality. Communities living near the border will be able to feel safe again,” Mamytov said.

Is ’90 Percent’ Of The Border Agreed Upon?

It is impossible to discount another Tajik-Kyrgyz flare up along the border.

Nearly 17 months separated the “wars” of May 2021 and September 2022 and, in both cases, the escalation was remarkably rapid.

But few would have expected peace to last so long in the fall of last year.

In the immediate aftermath of the second, deadlier conflict, Kyrgyzstan canceled military training exercises on its territory for the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) — a Russian-led regional military bloc — that were scheduled for October 2022 by explaining that Kyrgyz citizens would not accept the presence of Tajik troops on Kyrgyz soil so soon after a conflict that claimed at least 80 Kyrgyz lives and displaced more than 100,000 people.

At talks involving Japarov, Rahmon, and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, that same month, Rahmon conspicuously failed to greet Japarov.

But a year later and just two weeks after Tashiev aired his frustrations over the direction the talks were taking, both he and his Tajik colleague, Saimumin Yatimov, hailed the signing of Protocol 42. Tashiev said the document “provides a basis for resolving all border issues.”

Yatimov was almost as evocative, noting that the two countries were “aiming to reach a comprehensive and fundamental agreement” as quickly as possible.

There were few details then, but Yatimov was more specific when speaking after further talks on December 2, declaring that the question of a troublesome road linking Vorukh — an enclave of Tajik territory in Kyrgyzstan — and the Tajik border settlement of Khoja Alo was “practically solved.”

Then came the news that the countries had agreed on another 24 kilometers of the border after talks held in the Tajik town of Buston, near the Kyrgyz border.

But it was after talks in Kyrgyzstan’s southern region of Batken on December 12 that the two men claimed their countries had preliminarily agreed on more than 90 percent of their shared border.

That would be a significant achievement.

Only last year, around one-third of the approximately 975-kilometer frontier (Kyrgyz officials claim it is slightly shorter) was still not demarcated.

In an interview with RFE/RL, Dushanbe-based political analyst Sherali Rizoyon said incentives for an agreement were raised by a growing impulse in Central Asia toward regional integration and an uptick in diplomatic activity involving several outside powers.

“Whether on the bilateral or regional level, the problem of state borders prevents the countries of Central Asia benefiting from the new opportunities that are appearing today,” Rizoyon told RFE/RL. “Countries cannot afford to remain hostage to border issues for long — they need to restore mutually beneficial cooperation.”

The ‘Deterrent Component’ And Unclear Russian Role

The word “historic” is overused in Central Asian diplomacy, but it would definitely apply to any agreement between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan on their state border.

Although the dispute did not turn violent until independence, analysts note that Tajik and Kyrgyz opinions on where the border begins and ends have been at odds since 1924, when Tajikistan was still an autonomous territory inside the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and the territory of modern-day Kyrgyzstan had a similar status inside the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.

That makes next year the 100th anniversary of the dispute — and as good a time as any to end it.

But if 2023 has proven a year of genuine progress on border talks, it comes on the back of the tremendous human and material price paid by the two poorest countries in Central Asia.

And a big part of that is the increasingly deadly weapons deployed in the last two conflicts, amid a mini-arms race that has seen Kyrgyzstan secure Turkish Bayraktar drones and Tajikistan receiving equivalent weapons from Iran.

Francisco Olmos, a senior researcher in Central Asian affairs at Spain’s GEOPOL 21 Center, noted the “deterrent component” in the Kyrgyz leadership’s boasts about their recently acquired Bayraktar drones while speaking on RFE/RL’s Majlis podcast in November.

The destructive power of the Bayraktar was also in evidence in last year’s clashes, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), whose investigation published in May 2023 found that forces on both sides had “likely” committed war crimes against civilians.

In an interview with RFE/RL after the release of that report, HRW Senior Crisis and Conflict Researcher Jean-Baptiste Gallopin said the watchdog’s interviews with people on both sides of the border showed that local populations “are tired of these terrifying conflicts and are really yearning for peace.”

At the same time, local communities in Tajikistan’s Sughd Province and Kyrgyzstan’s Batken Province — the scene of most of the violence in recent years — will have their own opinions about what constitutes a good settlement.

Additionally, unrest in Kyrgyzstan over a landmark border agreement reached with Uzbekistan early this year suggests that selling a border agreement to the population is not always easy.

Yet another unknown is Russia, whose failure to prevent large-scale conflict between two of its military allies drew criticism of a Kremlin bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine. Also criticized was the CSTO — a security bloc sometimes framed as Moscow’s answer to NATO.

That trilateral meeting in October 2022 in Astana was more welcomed by Japarov — who unsuccessfully requested Putin’s intervention — than Rahmon, who later launched a tirade focused on Moscow’s shortcomings as a strategic partner.

Putin said after the talks that Russia had offered to retrieve some of its own archival Soviet-era maps to help resolve the dispute.

Since then, Russia has done almost nothing to suggest it is playing a mediatory role.

But on September 20, the Russian Foreign Ministry waded into the diplomatic fallout over Tashiev’s comments, warning against “harsh declarations” that it said could reverse the progress made on the border by the two countries.

“It should be remembered that armed conflicts in the post-Soviet space are beneficial primarily to the collective West, which has its own tendentious goals that have nothing to do with the real interests of Central Asian countries,” the ministry said.

Source: RFERL

The post Can Kyrgyzstan And Tajikistan Consign Their Deadly Border Conflicts To The Past? appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

AKIPRESS.COM – Two new criminal cases are being investigated against former head of the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan Karim Masimov, the National Security Committee told Kazinform.

“The NSC continues a pre-trial investigation of case against Masimov on legalization, laundering of money and other property obtained by criminal means and receiving a bribe on an especially large scale,” the Committee said.

With the sanction of the prosecutor’s office, Masimov was taken to the pre-trial detention center of the capital’s department of the National Security Committee for investigative actions.

However, the new cases in the Kazinform article were opened back in March 2022, Informburo.kz reports. Then the NSC reported that Karim Masimov received a bribe of $2 million from representatives of a foreign state for a closed contract. These funds were returned from Hong Kong to the National Bank of Kazakhstan. It was also reported that Masimov, while serving as Prime Minister, received an elite guest house and a plot of land in the capital worth about 2.5 billion tenge from one of the business structures.

Source: Akipress

The post Two New Criminal Cases Opened Against Former Head of National Security Committee of Kazakhstan Karim Masimov appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

WASHINGTON – The results of the long-delayed government review of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will be released next month, the White House announced Wednesday, with Congress and the public set to see an assessment of what went wrong as America ended its longest war.

The August 2021 pullout of U.S. troops led to the swift collapse of the Afghan government and military, which the U.S. had supported for nearly two decades, and the return to power of the Taliban. In the aftermath, President Joe Biden directed that a broad review examine “every aspect of this from top to bottom.”

It was originally set to be released at the one-year anniversary of the withdrawal but was delayed while agencies continued their work.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday that the work was nearly complete and that the administration was readying the release next month.

“We expect to be able to share those takeaways with the public by mid-April,” Kirby said. He said the administration would share classified sections of the report with congressional oversight committees.

House Republicans have been pushing the Biden administration since the withdrawal to release documents related to official communications and the review of how the chaotic fall of Kabul came to be.

There are currently two ongoing investigations into the withdrawal. One them is being led by Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who requested documents from Blinken in January. On Wednesday, the House Republican received the first batch of documents from the State Department.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to appear Thursday before McCaul and the Foreign Affairs committee, where he is expected to be grilled on the withdrawal.

Source : News 4 Jax

The post US Review of Afghanistan Withdrawal to Be Released in April appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

A probe into whether UK soldiers stormed the houses of two innocent Afghan families and summarily executed their relatives began Wednesday, part of an effort by investigators looking into allegations of war crimes committed by the British Armed Forces in Afghanistan – and the purported coverups that followed them.

The two families, the Saifullahs and the Noorzais, lost four relatives each during separate incidents in February 2011 and October 2012. They have been seeking justice for more than a decade.

The independent inquiry, commissioned by Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, was first announced in December. A member of the Noorzai family at the time recounted how his two brothers and his brother-in-law were all killed.

“I was handcuffed, beaten and interrogated outside our family home by British soldiers. My relatives and friend were each shot in the head as they sat drinking tea,” the individual said. “My family has waited 10 years to find out why this happened.”

While the probe stems from the two families’ legal battles, it will cover “numerous” alleged crimes committed in Afghanistan from mid-2010 until mid-2013, including those investigated by prominent British media organizations such as the The Sunday Times and BBC Panorama.

Charles Anthony Haddon-Cave, the judge presiding over the investigation, asked anyone with information about the incidents in question to get in touch with his team. However, there is no clear mechanism yet on how his team would communicate with witnesses in Afghanistan, which is currently under the rule of the Taliban – the group British and American forces fought for years before the US withdrawal in 2021.

Though some of the inquiry’s work, including several hearings, will be conducted behind closed doors due to national security reasons, Haddon-Cave said he intends to “hold open hearings where possible and where appropriate.”

“Everybody has to understand the material I and my team are dealing with is highly sensitive,” he added.

This is not the first time the British Armed Forces has been investigated for committing potential war crimes and then covering them up. The International Criminal Court launched a preliminary investigation into the British military’s conduct in Iraq but ended the examination in 2020 without pursuing an investigation due in part to the “inadequate” response of the British army at the time.

The inquiry will also examine the previous Royal Military Police investigation that produced no prosecutions. A significant part of the inquiry’s work will be to determine “whether there was a coverup, when, by whom, [and] at what level,” Haddon-Cave said.

Haddon-Cave said he has been assured by the relevant authorities that his team’s work will not be impeded. He said he has the power to compel witnesses and order the reproduction of documents.

“I’m very hopeful that there will be full cooperation, not least because what we are looking at here is really restoring the reputation of the military and the country,” he said.

Source : CNN

The post Independent Probe Into Alleged Extrajudicial Killings in Afghanistan by British Military Begins appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

It’s perhaps not surprising that Tajikistan, which shares a poorly guarded, 750-mile border with opium-rich Afghanistan, has become a major global drug-trafficking hub—in fact, more than 80 percent of Afghanistan’s heroin exports to Russia and Europe now pass through Tajik territory. Over the past decade, the United States, worried that the drug trade would soon be accompanied by all the other security problems that plague Afghanistan, has cooperated closely with Tajikistan’s government to help it stem the narcotics trade. Seems reasonable, right?

Unfortunately, that government is such a dubious partner that hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid have done little to solve the country’s problems or stop the drug business—while helping to shore up its apparatus of repression. The United States has spent nearly $200 million since 2001 on security assistance for Tajikistan, increasingly focused on training and arming special military and police units. In 2012, for example, U.S. Special Forces trained 350 members of the State Committee of National Security, the successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB, including courses in marksmanship, close-quarters combat and weapons.

But while the GKNB is on the front lines of fighting drug traffickers, it is also the primary organ of political repression in the country—and many observers see it as more engaged in the latter. That includes the detention and torture of dozens of dissidents, according to human rights groups.

And besides, a substantial portion of the drugs that transit through Tajikistan—accounting for as much as 30 percent of the country’s GDP—do so through legal border crossings. No surprise, as the largest drug traffickers in Tajikistan are widely believed to be closely tied to high-level officials in the deeply corrupt Tajik government. The man thought to be founder of Tajikistan’s first major drug-trafficking group, for instance, was the lieutenant to the founder of the political party that brought President Emomali Rahmon to power in 1992. “In no other country of the world, except perhaps contemporary Afghanistan, can such a superimposition between drug traffickers and government officials be found,” a 2007 research paper concluded.

Officially, the United States is critical of the human rights record of Tajikistan’s security services, pointing to ineffective law enforcement compromised by drug lords’ “high-level connections with government officials and security agents.” But in reality, Washington is complicit in this vast network of illegal trading: The majority of the trafficking in Tajikistan is believed to occur on the country’s few good roads and bridges—one of which was built in 2009 with $35 million in U.S. Central Command funds. The U.S.-trained and -equipped GKNB targets not the big-time smugglers with ties to the government, but the smaller pushers who have to sneak across the Afghan border. In the most cynical interpretation, the United States is helping the government of Tajikistan take out its drug-trafficking competition.

Congressional restrictions limit military aid to Uzbekistan, the most repressive U.S. partner in Central Asia. But Tajikistan—with a human rights record that is nearly as bad—has been able to slide under the radar and become a major beneficiary of Pentagon largesse. And Tajikistan has benefited even though its strategic utility to the United States is relatively small compared with its Central Asian neighbors. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan host the lion’s share of overland U.S. military transit to Afghanistan (leaving Tajikistan as a backup supply route for the Uzbekistan route), and Kyrgyzstan hosts a U.S. Air Force base (at least until July).

Tajikistan’s leading opposition politician, Muhiddin Kabiri, says the U.S. focus on military issues in his country has come at the expense of America’s purported interest in human rights. Before Central Asia assumed such a large role in the Afghanistan operation, “the main question between Tajikistan and U.S. representatives was economic questions, human rights, democracy and stability,” Kabiri told me recently. And indeed, while security assistance was less than 5 percent of total U.S. spending in Central Asia in the 1990s, it has climbed to more than 30 percent since 2007. Now, Kabri says, the focus—and spending—heavily leans toward military operations. “Human rights, democracy, free elections—these kinds of problems, maybe they will touch these questions, but only last, only for protocol,” he says. All of which makes the Tajik government “very lucky.”

The post The Narcostate appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.