CENTRAL ASIA: CHARGES LINK RUSSIAN MILITARY TO DRUG TRADE

Drug trafficking from war-torn Afghanistan through the former Soviet Union
has dramatically increased over the past 20 years. UN-sponsored regional
programs have so far been unable to stem the growth of narcotics-smuggling
to Western Europe through Russia and the Central Asian states of
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. A major
factor in the huge expansion of the Afghan drug trade may be the alleged
involvement of some of the Russian military stationed in Tajikistan. RFE/RL
correspondent Jean-Christophe Peuch reviews the evidence in light of new
accusations recently made by a former Russian military intelligence officer.

Prague, 8 June 2001 (RFE/RL) -- Since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Central Asia has emerged as a major international drug trafficking route
linking some of the world's largest illicit opium producers to the most
lucrative markets of Western Europe. Analyst say the amount of drugs moving
along the ancient Silk Road has become a major threat to the entire region,
and beyond.

Figures published last year by the United Nations Drug Control Program, or
UNDCP, show that 80 percent of the heroin consumed in Western Europe
originated in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that one-half of these drugs
traveled there through Central Asia.

The UNDCP estimated that in Afghanistan, some 91,000 hectares of opium
poppy were cultivated in 1999. This represented an increase of more than 40
percent compared to the previous year.

But last summer, Taliban leader Mullah Omar officially banned opium poppy
cultivation in all areas controlled by the militia. UNDCP officials who
recently visited Afghanistan say that the Taliban prohibition is nearly
total, while opium poppies continue to grow in territory controlled by the
Northern Alliance opposition forces.

The region's drug trade, however, continues to flourish. Geography, porous
borders, organizational chaos, local conflicts, and wide-scale corruption
are among the main factors that have contributed to the explosion of drug
trafficking. The trafficking, in turn, has helped criminalize Central Asian
economies.

Some regional experts also believe that the presence of a large Russian
military presence in the area has played a significant role in the spread
of illicit drug trafficking.

In a report published in March 2000, the Washington-based Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace think tank cited allegations about
Russian soldiers headquartered in the Tajik capital Dushanbe or deployed
along the 1,200-km-long Tajik-Afghan border. Carnegie researchers Martha
Olcott and Natalia Udalova said that Russian soldiers were suspected of
helping drug traffickers by providing them with transport facilities.

Yesterday Olcott told our correspondent that as long ago as two years ago
she heard stories implicating the Russian military in the regional drug
trade when she attended an international seminar in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek.

"We got plenty of hints [then] that the Russian military could be involved.
But people were not willing to address the issue of whether this was with
the overt participation of senior military officials in place or with the
covert participation of them. There is no question in my mind that part of
the Russian military has been a corrupting influence in Central Asia from
the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Part of the Russian military
has been engaged in the illegal sale of their own weapons. And part of the
Russian military seems to have actively facilitated the sale of drugs."

In an interview published last week (dated 29 May) in the "Moscow News"
("Moskovskie Novosti") weekly, former Russian military intelligence officer
Anton Surikov charged that a substantial portion of the drugs produced in
Afghanistan had been directly shipped from the Tajik capital Dushanbe on
board Russian military planes, helicopters, and trains.

Surikov said: "You can come to an arrangement [with custom officials] so
that the search of military transport planes remains purely formal. The
same goes for train convoys carrying military cargo [to Russia from
Tajikistan]."

According to his account, Afghan opium producers usually sold drugs to
Tajik citizens who smuggled them into Tajikistan with the active complicity
of Russian border guards. The drugs were then put on board military planes
or trains en route to Russia, where they were sold to local criminal gangs.

Surikov, who now is an aide to the chairman of the Duma's committee on
industrial policy, said he was posted to Tajikistan in 1993 after the start
of the civil war that brought President Imomali Rakhmonov to power. He
estimated the number of senior Russian officers involved in the Afghan drug
trade to have been between 50 and 100.

In the past, similar allegations against Russian officers serving in
Tajikistan have appeared in both Russian and Western media. But Surikov is
the first former officer -- and the first official, either military or
civilian -- to publicly charge collusion between some Russian high military
officers and Afghan drug traders.

What prompted Surikov to talk to the press now is unclear.

"Moscow News" correspondent Sanobar Shermatova specializes in Central Asian
affairs. Shermatova told RFE/RL's Tajik Service that she had met in the
past with a number of Russian officers, who privately confirmed that some
of their peers had been actively involved in the Afghan drug trade.

Shermatova says that even though the Russian high command is aware of the
situation, it has failed to do anything to prevent corrupt officers from
illegally shipping drugs to Russia.

"For me, it has always been an enigma. How could you explain that neither
the Defense Ministry nor any other official body has ever taken any measure
when they have very detailed information on what is going on along the
[Tajik-]Afghan border?" UNDCP officials told our correspondent that they
were not aware of any possible Russian involvement in the Afghan drug trade
and that they could therefore "neither confirm nor deny" Surikov's accusations.

In Moscow, Russian authorities have not reacted to Surikov's charges. But a
spokesman for the Russian border guards stationed in Tajikistan dismissed
the accusations as "groundless."

At the same time, a high-ranking Tajik official has added fuel to the
controversy by saying that both Russians and Tajiks control drug
transportation routes to Western Europe. In an interview with RFE/RL's
Tajik Service, the deputy head of Tajikistan's UN-sponsored Drug Control
Agency, Sheravliyo Mirzoavliyoyev said:

"In the course of the emergency actions that we have conducted, many drug
traffickers have been caught. Among them are not only Tajik citizens, but
also citizens of other countries -- notably, citizens of Russia -- Russian
border guards, Tajik border guards, police officials, and government
officials."

In a debate broadcast on state television earlier this year (1 February),
Tajik officials admitted that an unspecified number of officers of the
Interior Ministry, the Customs Office, and even the Drug Control Agency had
been arrested on charges of complicity with drug smugglers. The debate
followed a Tajik government Security Council meeting, during which
Rakhmonov reportedly criticized his law-enforcement agencies for failing to
fight drug trafficking effectively.

Four months ago, the chairman of the Tajik state committee on border
protection, Saidanvar Kamolov, said that law-enforcement agencies and
border guards seized only one-tenth of the drugs smuggled across the
Tajik-Afghan border last year.

UNDCP figures show that in recent years the five CIS Central Asian states
together were responsible for only 15 percent of all regional seizures of
Afghan drugs, while neighboring Iran made more than half (55 percent) of
the seizures.

The five-year civil war (1992-97) in Tajikistan, one of the poorest former
Soviet republics, contributed substantially to the explosion of the drug
trade in Central Asia, with both warring sides turning to trafficking to
finance their military campaigns.

The start of large-scale drug smuggling in the Central Asia region goes
back to the early 1980s, when Soviet soldiers fighting in Afghanistan first
established business relations with local heroin producers. In 1996, when
the militantly Islamic Taliban wrested control of most of Afghanistan's
territory from forces loyal to President Burhanuddin Rabbani, it inherited
some efficient drug-production facilities and illegal trade routes.

In the early years of its rule, out of religious conviction, the Taliban
banned the use of drugs by Afghans. But the militia permitted the export of
drugs and taxed the annual opium harvest. Pakistani journalist Ahmed
Rashid, who closely follows Taliban affairs, estimates that its revenues
from taxes on opium trade have been at least $20 million a year.

With an opium output of 3,000 to 4,600 tons annually, Afghanistan had
accounted for an estimated three-fourths of the world's heroin supply. But
now the UNDCP believes Afghanistan will no longer be a major player in the
global drug trade.

Some analysts are skeptical of the UNDCP's conclusions. They argue that the
recent end of opium-poppy cultivation could simply be the result of the
serious drought that hit the country last year. Others suggest that it may
also be an attempt by the Taliban to artificially drive up the price of heroin.

Surikov says that in the past, 90 percent of the 300 to 460 tons of heroin
produced annually in Afghanistan -- and funneled to Western markets with
the help of the Russian military -- came from Taliban-controlled territory.
As for heroin and other opium-poppy by-products that originated in areas
controlled by the Northern Alliance, Surikov says they reached Western
markets "through different channels."

Carnegie Endowment analyst Olcott believes it would be a mistake to see
drug traffickers as tied to one group or another. She says: "I would try to
see these [drug traders] as neutral because they will deal with whatever
regime is in place in Afghanistan. This is a business that the civil war in
Afghanistan helped promote, not the other way [around]."