Tajik border guards and Afghan border police complete OSCE Patrol Management and Analysis training course

DUSHANBE, 31 October 2014 –The Tajik border guards and Afghan border police officers today completed a two-week OSCE Patrol Management and Analysis training course.

The training course was focused on developing the operational capacities of Tajik border guards and Afghan border police. During the course twelve Tajik border guards and eleven Afghan border police officers were familiarized with the techniques of collecting information, tactical patrolling, crime scene management, management and analysis for operational planning in action.

A mock exercise helped to refine real-time joint operational planning, co-operation and co-ordination skills between the two border services. As part of the training, sessions on gender sensitive border policing and treatment of criminals and victims, as wells as on investigation and interviewing, were delivered by experts from the OSCE Office in Tajikistan.

The Head of the OSCE Office in Tajikistan Ambassador Markus Mueller said: "Cooperation between Afghan and Tajik border troops is an absolutely critical element when addressing eventually increasing security risks at the border. This will more than double the capacity to cope with the challenges of transnational organized crime, terrorism, and the drug trade."

The Chief of Education of the Afghan Border Police Colonel Gylnaby Talash said: "The work of the OSCE plays an important role in raising the professionalism of Tajik and Afghan operations, while promoting cross-border co-operation. Effective joint work on all levels is the best way to prevent and stop criminal activities that we are facing on the common border line.”

The course is part of the Patrol Programming and Leadership Project, aimed at enhancing the capacities of Tajikistan’s border troops and Afghanistan’s border police to detect and interdict illegal cross-border movement.