Today morning a rally and a ceremony of lowering the Russian Federation's flag and hoisting the Tajik Republic's flag took place in the Ishkashim border detachment. Russian border guards with families left for Khorog to be then further sent to a new place of service. Members of the joint Russian-Tajik commission departed too to hand over to the Tajik colleagues a 212-km section of the Khorog border detachment. After the Khorog section, Tajik border guards will be handed over the Kalaikhumb section of the Tajik-Afghan border the length of 100 km (73 km of this section was guarded by Tajik border guards from 1998).
Overall, in November-December 2004, Russian border guards will hand over to Tajik border guards 881.6 km of the Tajik-Afghan border section in Gorny Badakhshan.
This process is taking place in line with Agreement of October 16, 2004, between the Republic of Tajikistan and the Russian Federation on the procedure of handing over of Tajik-Afghan border. Overall, Russian border guards will hand over to Tajik colleagues 50 border checkpoints with all infrastructure necessary for service.
In line with the above-mentioned Agreement, Russian border guards will continue to render assistance to Tajik colleagues in protecting the state border of the Republic of Tajikistan, interact for protection of CIS external borders, jointly work out and implement measures to fight the illegal migration, smuggling of weapons, ammo, explosives and poisons, radioactive materials and drugs. These tasks at the Ishkashim section will be carried out by three officers of the Russian border group in Tajikistan.
