Afghan drugs a global threat

Subject: Afghan drugs a global threat Tue 22 Feb 2011, 11:44 pm

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Afghanistan produces 80 percent of the world’s illegal opiates and 90 percent of the most potent of them, heroin. Trafficking across Tajikistan and Pakistan annually brings 150 million unit doses of this heroin and 30 million doses of hashish to Russia and Europe. Proceeds from the trade fuel terrorist insurgencies like the Taliban.

Accordingly, the Collective Security Organization of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Armenia asks the United Nations Security Council to declare the Afghan-grown drugs a global threat. A paper to this effect Monday carries the signatures of all seven presidents in the CSTO.

We have the details from CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordiuzha:

"The paper also calls on the UN to intensify international action against the drug threat and advises it to regularly assess the performance of the Afghan government on the counternarcotics front. If approved, these initiatives will make for concerted global efforts to contain and combat the drug menace."

This opinion is shared by Russia’s chief counternarcotics officer Viktor Ivanov:

"Indeed, if tagged a global threat, the Afghan drugs will encounter stronger international barriers against them, including operations to eradicate opium crops. The situation now is absolutely intolerable. In the past decade alone, the Afghan drugs have affected an estimated 20 million people, leaving a million of them dead."

In 2010, Russia successfully joined forces with the United States and Afghanistan for destroying several illegal drug refineries on Afghan territory. It continues to bolster anti-drug services in former Soviet Central Asia and is teaming up with the European Union for several other counterdrug programmes. In the coming five years, it will be training counternarcotics personnel for Afghanistan and disbursing more and more funds for the counternarcotics arm of the United Nations.

Source:
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/02/21/45480765.html