Intelligence chiefs from Iran, Russia, China, and Pakistan met in Islamabad to pool minds about measures against the threat of the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group in Afghanistan, a Russian official said.
The meeting was held in the Pakistani capital on Tuesday, Sergei Ivanov, the chief of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service’s press bureau told TASS.
Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, represented Russia, according to the report.
Discussions focused on the dangers arising from the buildup of IS on Afghan territory, Ivanov said.
“The conferees reached an understanding on the importance of coordinated measures to prevent the trickling of ISIS terrorists from Syria and Iraq into Afghanistan from where they could pose risks to neighboring countries,” he said, using another acronym for the terrorist group.
The senior security and intelligence officials stressed the need for a more active role of regional powers in the effort to end the conflict in Afghanistan.
In recent years, the Middle East has been plagued with terrorist groups like IS, which are believed to be supported and bank-rolled by foreign powers.
Terrorist groups have been committing heinous crimes not only against non-Muslims but mostly against Muslims in the region.
In November 2017, IS terrorists were flushed out of their last stronghold in Syria’s Al-Bukamal. The city’s liberation marked an end to the medieval group’s self-proclaimed caliphate it had declared in 2014.
Since then, the group and its mercenaries have tried to relocate to other countries, with war-ravaged Afghanistan billed as one of the main nesting places for the group.
