Tajikistan's porous southern border

Heroin producers in Afghanistan, some of the principal financiers of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, have never before been so brazen or so wealthy.

Sacks of high-quality Afghan heroin seized last week in Tajikistan carried the trademarks Super Power and 555. Some of the sacks, which were hidden inside foil-lined containers of instant cappuccino mix, even included the addresses of the labs in Afghanistan where the heroin had been refined.

from: Detroit Free Press

One of the major drug-smuggling routes to Europe leads through Afghanistan's northern neighbour Tajikistan. Shattered by a bloody civil war from 1992 until 1997, it is today the poorest of the Central Asian states, with a GDP per capita of only $1,300 (purchasing power). The more than 10,000-strong force that protects the border to Afghanistan and directly reports to Moscow is part of a larger CIS peace-keeping unit deployed on Tajik soil after a peacy treaty came into force. 'It has primary responsibility for guarding the border with Afghanistan. It consists mostly of Tajiks with some Russians and a limited number of other Central Asians, although the officer corps remains principally Russian' (globalsecurity.org).

After the Taliban had been defeated in late 2001, opium production skyrocketed and even surpassed pre-war peak levels the following year. UN programs to reward peasants for not producing poppy even led to higher yields than before, Lutz reported:

In early 2002, the UN mission in Kabul announced an action plan to combat the opium problem: Poppy farmers who voluntarily agreed to their fields being burned would receive 1750 dollars per hectare in compensation. So-called “eradication teams” swarmed out into the provinces, protected by British elite soldiers. But the plan backfired. “When the farmers heard that the UN would not punish them but instead practically wanted to buy poppy plants from them, they grew us much as they could,” a local NGO employee tells me. “The whole of Badakhshan was covered with one red poppy carpet, even in gardens and on the roofs of houses.” Although the promised compensation was only a fraction of what a farmer could earn by selling a hectare’s worth of opium but frequently the predominantly Afghan members of the UN teams were open to bribery. The trick was to collect money twice: a farmer who had one acre of poppy plants destroyed would claim damage compensation for four hectares. In return for a juicy share of the additional compensation, UN workers were prepared to condone the fraud. (full article)

One main question still remains: If Tajikistan is the major trafficking route for drugs, how can smugglers overcome the 10,000-strong border force then? What is more, how can drugs be safely transported on such a huge scale, taking into account that Afghanistan is the world's largest opium producer? In 2002, the country produced 3,400 tons of opium and provided about 90% of the heroin consumed in the UK. The trafficking routes have changed considerably over the last year. The UN estimates that today Central Asia is the region through which 65% of the Opiates pass, Tajikistan clearly being the major northern route. You can put one and one together: Surely more than 1,000 tons of opium pass the Afghan-Tajik border each year. Last year, border guards 'confiscated 9.5 tons of drugs' (RFE). So, why is only such a tiny percentage being found?

The question whether the Russian Border Guard Force (RBF) is involved in trafficking is obsolete. Rather, the question has to be: To which extent does this happen and, more importantly, up to which level do authorities know about it?

"We've seen evidence that the Russian military, and at a high level, has been involved in the Central Asian drug trade, if not by any other factor [than] by the size of this transport from Central Asia through Russia or the former Soviet Union," Niklas Swanstrom (head of the program for Contemporary Silk Road Studies at Sweden's Uppsala University) said. "It can only be transported by trucks, private planes, or military aircraft -- and military aircraft seems to be a big factor in this. And that can only be organized by senior officers."

Lutz found out similar things:
...“Smuggling is easy: with donkeys or jeeps you take the stuff to the commanders near the border,” says Qadir, after locking the door. They would then get in touch with their accomplices on the Tajik side: Russian officers. Both parties arrange a suitable time and place for an undisturbed exchange of drugs and money, Qadir reports. He knows of occasional problems with young Russian officers who are still over-zealous and incorruptible. “But most of them change their mind after some time. Then only those smugglers who do not ‘officially’ declare a transport risk getting caught by the Russian border guards,” Qadir tells me. “Usually, the Russians kill those ‘uncooperative’ smugglers, as a warning to others.”

A main problem within the border troops seem to be ethnic Tajiks: "I think when you're talking about the kinds of salaries that people are paid -- although they're better in the Russian border guards than in the Tajik border guards -- and the temptations for the trade, as well as the ethnic ties across the border, you will inevitably have people who are in positions in the law enforcement area that will be tempted to do this", says James Callahan of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Central Asia. However, there are isolated cases of Russian collaboration, reports Radio Free Europe.

As a result, the increased drug trafficking has costly side effects for the Tajik society. Bringing the drugs across the border is one thing. But to transport them all the way to Europe requires a network which can't surpass society without making an impact. On the heroin's journey, it leaves the seeds of criminalisation. It creates vertical corruption networks and an infrastructure with which not only drugs can be trafficked (arms, money, humans, etc.). In addition, drug trafficking leads to levels of addiction, which we Europeans have never seen in our capitals. 'Tajikistan's health ministry recently announced the country has 6,671 drug addicts but the unofficial figure is at least 15 times higher, according to Andre Onishenko, director of the Tajik Narcological Hospital' (Aegis)
"You only have to ask a couple of your friends and they know where you can go" says one young Tajik in a matter-of-fact tone (BBC).

Central Asian governments could have a look at Iran in order to analyse the problems they could face within some years time. A dose of heroin in Tehran's streets is sometimes cheaper than a bottle of milk. About 70% of all prisoners are believed to be jailed for drug abuse or trafficking. Drug-trafficking does not only cause security concerns, it also has a huge social impact. In societies with difficult economic circumstances, where the young generation is bereft of its right to work, drugs have it easy. People take drugs in order to forget.