CIS security body chief calls for action to curb flow of drugs from
Afghanistan
Interfax news agency
22 Jun 05
Moscow, 22 June: Troops of the antiterrorist coalition in Afghanistan
are effectively failing to take action in the struggle against the
production of narcotics in this country, the secretary-general of the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Nikolay Bordyuzha,
said in an interview with Russian news agency Interfax today. The
members of the CSTO are Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan and Armenia.
“During the entire period that the antiterror coalition has been
active not a single illegal narcotics laboratory (in Afghanistan) has
been destroyed. When I asked a US general why this was the case, he
told me that they had not been given the task of waging war on
narcotics, and that is why they are not waging this war,” Bordyuzha
said.
According to the information of the Russian federal drugs control
agency, most narcotics, in particular 90 per cent of the heroin, that
enter Russia come from Afghanistan via Central Asian countries.
Bordyuzha noted that last week responsibility for guarding the
Tajik-Afghan border was passed completely from Russian border guards
to service personnel of the Tajik State Border Protection Committee.
“The departure from Tajikistan of Russian border guards, who had a
fairly efficient system for guarding the border could, of course, lead
to a growth in drug-trafficking from Afghanistan,” Bordyuzha said.
He went on to say that “a growth in drug-trafficking is possible
because everyone is noting a rise in the amount of opium sown in
Afghanistan”.
“The growth of drug-trafficking from Afghanistan is dangerous. And, to
be frank, neither special services nor law-enforcement agencies are
coping with the flow of drugs,” the CSTO general-secretary said.
He stressed that the CSTO member-states should assist Tajik border
guards with the guarding of the Tajik-Afghan border.
At the moment the border guard department of the Russian Federal
Security Service [FSB] in Tajikistan is being transformed into an
operational border group, which will begin operating from 2006.
It will not include actual troops. The service personnel in the group
will act as advisers and will help Tajik border guards with training
personnel and guarding the border.