HARD TO STOMACH CENTRAL ASIA

Drug trafficking in Central Asia is a matter of survival for some.

Medics in Moscow spent three days last December removing more than
half a kilo of heroin from the stomach of a drug courier from
Tajikistan. At the same time, a Russian woman was detained in a
railway station in Kazakhstan for the possession of half a kilo of
heroin, stuffed inside a smoked chicken.

Meanwhile, on a larger scale, 24 kilos were found in the car and
apartment of Tajikistan's trade representative in Kazakhstan, while
over 60 kilos of heroin (approximately 140 pounds), with a market
value of about a million dollars, were found stashed in two other
cars elsewhere in the country. Valuable quantities of drugs are
smuggled in innumerable other ways, hidden in the shoes of a
50-year-old man and his children, inserted into pomegranates in
Moscow, or mixed with apples and pears in Uzbekistan.

Drug trafficking from Afghanistan through Central Asia has expanded
dramatically over the past two decades. Today, Afghanistan accounts
for an estimated three-fourths of the world's heroin supply, with an
increasing proportion (one-half to two-thirds) of those drugs
trafficked through the Central Asian states of Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.

Most of this supply is sent into European and Russian markets, and
sometimes to the United States and Canada. An estimated 80 percent of
the heroin seized in Europe, and 95 percent in Great Britain,
originates from poppies in Afghanistan, most of which is trafficked
through Central Asia.

As in other parts of the world, narcotics trafficking here flourishes
as big business for some, and as an essential part of life for
others. Some experts estimate that the opium cultivated in
Afghanistan, sold in the form of heroin, would be worth about $100
billion at current market levels.

While the price for a kilogram of heroin in Afghanistan may be
upwards of $300, in Moscow the same kilogram can cost as much as 100
times that amount, and in Western Europe, more than 500 times that
amount, or upwards of $150,000.

Indeed, despite its repeated assurances to eliminate the growth of
opium, the Taliban has reportedly de facto sanctioned, and even
taxed, the cultivation and sale of opium. Estimates of the Taliban's
annual revenues from the opium market during the late 1990s range
from $10 million to upwards of $75 million. These profits finance the
ongoing wars against opposition forces and are also reported to fund
terrorist activities.

The Opium Ticket

At the same time, cultivation and trafficking is a way of life, and
sometimes a matter of survival, for many in the region. Opium poppy
cultivation has become an integral part of the rural economy in
Afghanistan, where many farmers are dependent on such profits to make
ends meet. In Central Asia, increasing numbers of impoverished people
are likewise willing to risk the harsh legal penalties of drug
trafficking because they view opium as their only ticket to survival.

These realities keep the drug trade vibrant and have spawned a range
of policies and programs on the part of Western governments and
donors to stem the production and trafficking of drugs in this part
of the world. In the past decade, tens of millions of dollars have
been directed to a number of entities to reduce opium poppy
cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan; to provide
training, equipment, institutional development, and other inputs to
support interdiction efforts in Central Asia; and, reportedly, to
initiate drug education programs in both regions.

The United Nation's Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UN
ODCCP), the primary sponsor of counter-narcotics programs throughout
the region, has worked for over a decade to reduce opium poppy
cultivation through rural development activities in Afghanistan. It
has also instituted a host of other programs, ranging from mapping
illicit crop cultivation in Afghanistan and Central Asia, to
supporting research at Uzbekistan's Institute of Genetics on the
development of a fungus capable of destroying the opium crop at its
root.

In Central Asia, the ODCCP's main focus has been on assisting each
country in developing a centralized counter-narcotics infrastructure,
i.e., assisting the creation of indigenous counter-narcotics and drug
control agencies and administrations; drafting legislation; providing
training and equipment to border guards, customs officials, and
others working on counter-narcotics initiatives; and, recently,
helping to establish separate courts for the prosecution of narcotics
consumption and trafficking crimes. The ODCCP is also supporting
regional collaboration in all of these areas through a year 2000
agreement on regional cooperation in fighting transnational crime.

U.S. bilateral programs with Central Asia overlap those of the ODCCP,
focusing on law enforcement training, equipment provision, and
providing technical assistance to legislatures, prosecutors, and
others to develop and implement more effective counter-narcotics
legislation. Germany, Britain, and other European donors are
increasingly following suit. Many U.S. experts believe that European
countries should bear the brunt of counter-narcotics efforts in
Central Asia, as they are most directly affected by the trafficking
of heroin from Afghanistan. Still, U.S. interest is on the rise,
fueled by the role of drug profits in financing terrorist activities
and potentially destabilizing the region as a whole.

But what has been the impact of these programs? Have they helped
significantly to abate the drug flow throughout Afghanistan and
Central Asia, or is it possible that they have further complicated
the problem? Have they alleviated the associated human rights,
ethnic, religious and other indirect impacts of the growing drug
trade, or perhaps inadvertently exacerbated them? What kinds of
questions do the programs raise regarding the challenges that loom
ahead?