UN anti-drug agency launches projects to stem heroin flow from Central Asia

With Central Asia turning into a hotspot for international heroin trafficking following the return of massive opium cultivation in Afghanistan, the United Nations anti-drug agency launched five new major projects totalling more than $17 million this week in a bid to cut off the narcotics flow from the region into Europe.

The project agreements, signed by a senior official of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and high-level officials of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, focus on improved law enforcement, better border controls and cooperation between Central Asian enforcement agencies and with Afghan law enforcement bodies.

The Director of UNODC's Division for Operations, Sumru Noyan, met with Prime Minister Nikolai Tanayev of Kyrgyzstan, Deputy Prime Minister Saidamir Zukhurov of Tajikistan, General Prosecutor Rashidjon Kadyrov of Uzbekistan, and leading officials from the respective Ministries for Foreign Affairs, Interior and other agencies.

The assistance is in line with a UN Security Council meeting held earlier this week on the drug threat from Afghanistan, which stressed the need both for stronger coordinated action to help Afghanistan halt opium poppy cultivation and for aiding neighbouring countries to curb drug trafficking, organized crime and terrorism.

In Tajikistan, three new projects worth more than $10 million will help the Drug Control Agency, created with UN support in 1999, lead and coordinate drug enforcement, and provide equipment and training to customs and border control agencies, including the Russian Federal Border Service, in their control of the 1,200 kilometre-long Afghan-Tajik border.

In Kyrgyzstan, UNODC is providing more than $6 million to help support a drug control agency there, and in Uzbekistan a countrywide database will be set up for information sharing and access to cases and legislative data.

All three countries are seeing more trafficking of already-processed heroin, higher heroin purity levels, and more vigilant, aggressive, and better organized illicit trafficking operations, in particular since opium production has moved into the northern provinces of Afghanistan, a region with close and direct routes into Central Asia.

In addition to being a prime heroin transit area, mainly to Europe and Russia, Central Asian countries are facing dramatic heroin-abuse increases. The number of HIV/AIDS infections from intravenous injection has soared, and there are fears that they may further multiply since heroin is widely and easily available.