OSCE Office trains Tajik border troops to strengthen Tajik-Afghan border patrolling

DUSHANBE, 10 December 2010 - The OSCE Office in Dushanbe completed an advanced training course today for Tajik border officials focusing on effective patrols.

The two-week course for border specialists took place in the Gissar training base 20 km west of Dushanbe and improved the skills of its participants in analyzing information from border patrols.

With the OSCE Office' support, under a Patrol Programming and Leadership Project, Tajik border personnel have been trained in such areas as patrol programming and management, patrol leadership, patrol related analytical processes, patrol medicine and winter patrolling.

Since July 2009, when the first Basic Patrol Leadership Course was launched , forty one staff from the Tajik Border Troops Department were successfully trained on skills required to conduct patrols. The course graduates will work in special mobile groups to be deployed in the future along the Tajik-Afghan Border.

"The course aims at providing necessary skills and knowledge to border troops, and thus helps build capacity of the Tajik Border Troops to detect and counter illegal movement across the Tajik -Afghan border through the use of improved human surveillance techniques," said Ambassador Ivar Vikki, the Head of the OSCE Office in Tajikistan. "On a broader scale, the project paves the way for the introduction of the new 'green border patrolling concept' called for in the recently adopted National Border Strategy of the Republic of Tajikistan, which was developed with assistance from the Office."

Upon the completion of the project, the OSCE Office in Tajikistan will hand over all project-related equipment and assets to the Tajik Department of Border Troops; it has also donated to the Department three cross-country vehicles to be used in guarding the borders.