DEA SPEARHEADS 15-COUNTRY DRUG RAID

Thousands Arrested In Central Asia, Balkans

Washington -- A broad narcotics sweep involving 25,000 law enforcement
officers and coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration across 15
countries of Central Asia and the Balkans has resulted in the arrest or
detention of thousands of suspects, U.S. officials said last week.

The sweep -- from June 10 to July 11 -- seized more than 3,700 pounds of
heroin and nine tons of other narcotics, they said.

For years, the agency has conducted multinational actions in Latin America,
but this operation was the first to cover the Balkans and Central Asia, the
officials said.

Involving police, customs and border officers of 18 countries, the sweep
was coordinated in three phases by regional command centers in Bucharest,
Romania and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, with the assistance of about 40 officers
of the DEA. The agency also supplied communications equipment for the
operation.

Steven Casteel, the drug agency's chief of intelligence, said the lessons
learned from the cooperative operation were more important than sheer numbers.

"Statistics are poor, if any, help in determining the correct actions to be
taken in policing or as a measure of success," he said.

Instead, Casteel, who has been in drug enforcement for 30 years, is
concentrating on what he can learn about trends in global drug smuggling
enterprises.

"I am a big believer in transnational policing," he said in an interview at
the DEA's headquarters overlooking the Pentagon. "You can talk about al
Qaeda and other forms of terrorism, but the biggest threat anywhere in the
world isn't terror, it's organized crime."

Casteel said he was especially interested in the seizure of 1.7 tons of
toluol, a solvent derived from petroleum that is used in purifying cocaine.
The substance was confiscated from the Turkish freighter Selene in a
Ukrainian port, Kerch, on the Black Sea, he said, "Indirectly, we saved
ourselves."

"Cocaine purities are going down," he said, adding that the toluol was to
be sent to Latin America, the principal source of cocaine for North America.

The Selene had false papers, he said -- "like changing license plates on a
stolen car."

The seizure of 56 pounds of heroin on June 6 at a border crossing between
Greece and Albania showed that Greek, Turkish and Albanian officials were
working together, he noted.

That was significant, he said, because it meant law enforcement agencies
were cooperating in a region where there are numerous ethnic rivalries.

He said the emphasis at the center in Bucharest was on identifying choke
points on the main Balkan routes used to move narcotics to Western and
Northern Europe. At the center in Bishkek, law enforcement officers from
Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan worked together.

The Bishkek operations were devised not only to catch smugglers, U.S.
officials said, but also to learn the methods of Central Asian and Afghan
heroin traffickers, the routes traffickers used, the involvement of
militant groups in drug trafficking, prices and purity levels.