Matthew C. DuPée

Director Operations (North America) Asia Despatch

On November 19, Russian and Tajik authorities carried out a series of raids that intercepted nearly 300 kilograms of Afghan heroin, the largest seizure of narcotics bound for Russia transiting through Tajikistan, according to Tajik officials. At least half of the narcotics were seized aboard a Russian bound train in northern Tajikistan while 180 kilograms of heroin were intercepted upon arrival in St. Petersburg. Tajikistan is reportedly ramping up efforts to counter the flow of illicit commodities over its mountainous 1,400km (870 miles) border with Afghanistan.

Rustam Nazarov, director of Tajikistan’s Drug Control Agency (AKN), recently stated that co-operation between anti-narcotics police in the Tajikistan and Afghanistan has been effective. “Over the past nine months of this year alone, AKN liaison officers, acting in concert with Afghan law enforcement, have carried out 43 joint operations seizing 852.6kg of narcotics, including 140kg of heroin,” he told reporters last week. So far, Tajik and Afghan drug police have shut down 12 Afghan drug laboratories, detained 50 traffickers, and confiscated five weapons in the joint operations.

Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon said Tajikistan confiscated more than 68.3 tons of narcotics in the last ten years, a drop in the bucket compared to Iran’s seizure of 270 tons of narcotics in the past seven months alone. Of the 68 tons of heroin seized since 2000, 56 of those were intercepted in 2003; which leaves little to the imagination regarding Tajikistan’s capacity and political will to effectively block the trafficking of narcotics through its territory. In comparing the seizure rate of the past ten years, the United Nations estimates that between 95 tons of heroin and 120 tons of opium is trafficked through Tajikistan’s territory each year. Tajikistan’s seizure rate is approximately 3% of the total amount trafficked across its borders every year; a less than stellar achievement. The United Nations, Afghanistan, The United States, and Russia have all voiced concern over the failure of Tajikistan’s trafficking countermeasures. The United States recently invested $15 million to build a Tajik Border Security Force training facility and Russian officials are pressuring Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan into doing more to thwart drug trafficking within its borders.

Most of the narcotics flow across official border crossing points. However, according to the UNODC , traffickers also swim, wade or cross the Amu Darya river by boat, with the majority reportedly crossing undetected. Once in Tajikistan, the loads are then broken down into smaller quantities to be shipped across the border by land, rail and air. Traffickers move a large portion of opiates north through Kyrgyzstan toward Kazakhstan, using Kyrgyzstan’s southern city of Osh as a regional hub of trafficking activity. Earlier this summer, Osh was the scene of fierce ethnic fighting where organized crime rivals also used the public upheaval to wage their own low-intensity conflict against one another’s interests.

Russian security forces formerly stationed in Tajikistan defended the border frontier and regularly clashed with traffickers until Tajik officials ordered them out in 2005. The opium based drug industry is estimated to generate as much as 30% of the recorded GDP of Tajikistan, an illicit business enterprise run by criminal organizations that has successfully penetrated the highest levels of the Tajik government and effectively eroded domestic and regional law enforcement efforts. Despite an increased effort to thwart drug trafficking and terrorism related incidents, Tajikistan remains vulnerable to the threat posed by Afghanistan’s entrenched drug industry and smuggling operations.

Matthew C. DuPée is Asia Despatch’s Director Operations (North America) he is a research associate in the Program for Culture & Conflict Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. His studies focus on the narcotics industry, organized crime and conflict in Southwest Asia. The opinions expressed here are his own.