National Security Commission sees need for regional anti-terrorist commissions

National Security Commission talked about the necessity to create anti-terrorist commissions in the regions of Kazakhstan, Tengrinews.kz reports citing deputy chairman of Kazakhstan National Security Commission Kamdulkarim Abdikazimov as saying at the conference called Prevention of crimes and violation of rights in Kazakhstan Senate. “We believe that to effectively resolve these problems we should create two vertical chains of command. Prevention, minimization and elimination of terrorism and its consequences should be made part of the first vertical. It has to be executed thought anti-terrorist commissions that should be formed up in the regions,” he said of measures to counter terrorism. “The actual countering of terrorism (should be represented by the second vertical) should be implemented through emergency response centers that should be formed in the center and in regions,” he continued. As part of the project to improve Kazakhstan's anti-terrorism legislation, Abdikazimov suggested to bring the definition of terrorism in line with the actual actions that have to be taken for an anti-terrorist operation to be successful. In his view, this would help redefine “countering of terrorism” through specifying its three core directions in the legislation. According to Abdikazimov, these directions are called to enhance countering of terrorism. “The first direction lays in prevention of terrorism, i.e. in elimination of life conditions that cause terrorism and make terrorist attacks possible from all departments of life of the society. "The second direction is in fighting terrorist, i.e. detection, prevention, suspension of terrorist activities, investigation and solving of terrorist crimes. "The third direction involves minimization and elimination of consequences of terrorist acts through all available forces and means,” the deputy chairman said. “Today terrorism should not be viewed only as a criminal act, but first as a complicated socio-political occurrence. Experts dealing with these problems have identified a range of common traits of terrorism that reflect its essence as a socio-political event,” he said speaking of “terrorism” term. By Gulnara Zhandagulova