DUSHANBE, Tajikistan -- The United States on Monday donated patrol boats and electronic equipment to help Tajikistan guard its borders and stem the flow of heroin from neighboring Afghanistan. The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that it gave the Tajik Border Protection Committee five patrol boats to be used along the Pyandj River border, as well as more than 100 computers and 60 power generators to be used at desolate checkpoints. The equipment, worth $585,000 will help the ex-Soviet nation patrol its boundaries more efficiently, U.S. official Paul Shott said during a ceremony. The mountainous Central Asian state is a major conduit for opium and heroin from Afghanistan, with which it shares an 830-mile border. Devastated by the 1992-97 civil war, Tajikistan remains one of the world's poorest states plagued by unemployment and economic instability. [end]
The Tajik general in charge of battling the drugs trade has been arrested amid claims of murder and corruption. Ghaffor Mirzoyev is being held in the capital Dushanbe while inquiries go on. He is accused of involvement in a murder, hoarding weapons including an anti-aircraft missile, and cheating the state out of a helicopter contract. Correspondents say he is one of the most powerful people in Tajikistan and had also been set to go to Athens as head of the national Olympic committee. [continues 270 words]
LOST CAUSE: The US-led anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan caused a brief lull in drug trafficking, but heroin production has recently increased at an alarming rate Warrant Officer Amirali Niyozov and his men trekked for five hours to reach the isolated mountain spot near the Afghan border where they had been tipped a drug drop was going down. After four hours lying in wait, Niyozov heard footsteps: Afghans were making their way across the barren slopes. "Who's there?" he shouted, firing warning shots into the air before training them on the suspected drug traffickers. They returned fire -- and then melted away into the night, leaving behind 31kg of drugs. [continues 679 words]
DUSHANBE: Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov stepped up his country's losing battle against drugs on Monday, threatening to exile entire villages if one resident was found participating in the country's flourishing drug trade. "From now on, even if just one resident from a border village is involved in drug trafficking, the entire village will take responsibility," Rakhmonov said, adding that all village residents "will be moved to other regions in the country." Military officials have said that around 1,000 Tajiks living on the country's southern border with Afghanistan are suspected of involvement in drug trafficking. The former Soviet republic has become a favoured point of passage for drugs from Afghanistan, sharing a 1,200km border with the world's biggest producer of opium and heroin by far.- AFP [end]
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan The news from Tajikistan is mostly bad. At least 80 percent of the population of 7 million lives in poverty, and a third of the children are malnourished. A million Tajik men have fled to Russia to look for work, stranding their families here. Most of the heroin used in Europe passes through Tajik territory, leaving a rising number of addicts in its wake. Rampant corruption discourages potential investors in the struggling economy. Tajikistan has modest natural endowments, and no oil or gas. An impoverished government has a total budget for 2002 of barely $175 million - - about half the cost of one new American ballpark. [continues 832 words]
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan - Russian border guards deployed to protect Tajikistan's volatile border with Afghanistan have confiscated more than a ton of drugs smuggled into the former Soviet republic this summer, officials said Monday. The Russian border guards have confiscated 568 kilograms (1,250 pounds) of drugs this month, up from 540 kilograms (1,188 pounds) in June, said border guards spokesman Col. Alexander Kondratyev. Of the drugs seized this month, heroin made up 510 kilograms (1,122 pounds), up from 245 kilograms (539 pounds) confiscated in June, Kondratyev said. [continues 195 words]
Opium Shortage USHANBE, Tajikistan - In the muddy back alleys of Dushanbe's Green Market, the most mafia-infested bazaar of this capital city, last year's hottest selling item - opium - is suddenly in short supply. ''Not this week,'' said one reputed dealer, whose reed-thin face was wrapped in a heavy red scarf. ''Maybe next, maybe next.'' The seven-week-old war in Afghanistan has upended the economics of the lucrative drug market in central Asia. Law enforcement officials say nothing has been harder hit than the opium and heroin flow through Tajikistan, a major narcotics corridor to Moscow, Europe, and eventually the neighborhoods, nightclubs and campuses of the United States. But the drug trade could easily rebound unless dramatic steps are taken, UN officials say, and they're looking to the US military to take the lead. [continues 754 words]
Analysts Say Taliban's Foes -- Bush's Likely Allies -- Are Using Opium and Other Drugs for Funds as Well DUSHANBE, Tajikistan -- In its assault on terrorism, the U.S. may seek to choke off profits from the Central Asian drug trade that are used to buy arms and explosives. But some important potential allies in Washington's struggle with Afghanistan are also believed to be reaping the rewards of the nation's burgeoning heroin trade. Nowhere is the problem clearer than along Afghanistan's northern border with Tajikistan, a sworn ally in President Bush's antiterrorist efforts -- and a major conduit for heroin and opium on its way to consumers in Europe. [continues 789 words]
Border Seizures Rise As Traffickers Targeted Dushanbe, Tajikistan --- Expected military strikes against Afghanistan have sent fears rippling among some of the Bush administration's declared foes: illegal drug traffickers. The United Nations said seizures of opium and heroin along the Afghan-Tajik border have doubled since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That is an indication, it says, that drug traffickers are trying to empty their stocks before any fighting in Afghanistan disrupts business. Matthew Kahane, a senior U.N. official in the Tajik capital, said drug traffickers fear they will become targets of the administration's declared war against terrorism and those who fund it. [continues 560 words]
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan -- Expected military strikes against Afghanistan have sent fears rippling among some of the Bush administration's declared foes, illegal drug traffickers. The United Nations said seizures of opium and heroin along the Afghan- Tajik border have doubled since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That is an indication, it says, that drug traffickers are trying to empty their stocks before any fighting in Afghanistan disrupts business. Matthew Kahane, a senior U.N. official in the Tajik capital, said drug traffickers fear they will become targets of the administration's declared war against terrorism and those who fund it. [continues 605 words]
Anti-Taliban Coalition Is Motley Band With Shady Past Dushanbe, Tajikistan -- Until President Bush signaled that the U.S. campaign against terrorism would start in Afghanistan, the West paid little attention to the cluster of fighters who have opposed the country's Taliban regime for the past five years -- the Northern Alliance. Although the Bush administration says ousting the Taliban regime would not be the goal of attacks against terrorist havens in Afghanistan, alliance leaders say U.S.-led attacks would afford them an opportunity to do precisely that. [continues 1198 words]
DASHTIDZHUM He was a threadbare child of 12 when he set out from his village for the city, a small, serious boy with a big mission: to sell 1 kilogram of Afghan opium in the Tajik capital to help his parents feed his 11 brothers and sisters. But in the venal, cutthroat underworld of Dushanbe, it is easy to cheat a village boy. The dealer who promised to pay him the following week simply disappeared. So Oiyatula Rakhimov returned home empty-handed. [continues 1053 words]
Afghanistan's Drug Trade Has Ensnared The Poor In Tajikistan, For Whom Smuggling Offers A Chance At A Better Life. DASHTIDZHUM, Tajikistan -- He was a threadbare child of 12 when he set out from his village for the city, a small, serious boy with a big mission: to sell 2 pounds of Afghan opium in the Tajik capital to help his parents feed his 11 brothers and sisters. But in the venal, cutthroat underworld of Dushanbe, it is easy to cheat a village boy. The dealer who promised to pay him the following week simply disappeared. [continues 2021 words]
PRAGUE. In Tajikistan's southern Shuroabad district, the narcotics trade from neighboring Afghanistan is jeopardizing the lives of local residents. Addiction is not the problem. Instead, many Tajiks say they have become the victims of Afghan drug dealers who rob them, kidnap family members, and sometimes even resort to murder -- all in an attempt to persuade the residents to aid in the narcotics business. The problem has existed for nearly a decade, but Shuroabad Tajiks say the violence has worsened in recent months. Since May, four people have been killed, more than 20 reported kidnapped, and scores of livestock stolen. The situation has grown so bad that many residents are leaving the area. Others are asking how -- with the area's heavily publicized border control - -- Afghans are continuing to enter their villages at will. [continues 551 words]
The gang-land style murder of Tajikistan Deputy Interior Minister Khabib Sanginov in Dushanbe on April 11 is a sign of intensifying competition among Tajikistan's drug lords. Tajikistan Interior Minister Khumdin Sharipov described the assassination as a criminal act, noting that Sanginov had been heading a government crackdown on organized crime. Sanginov's murder may be a sign that Tajik government anti-trafficking efforts are having an effect, and are provoking a reaction. The assassination was reportedly carried out by up to eight gunmen. Sanginov 's driver and two bodyguards were also killed in the attack. A statement by the Islamic Renaissance Party said the killings posed a threat to stability in the country, and urged the government to bring the culprits to justice. Reflecting the seriousness of the government's response, President Imomali Rahmonov is personally overseeing the investigation. [continues 581 words]
A bomb blast has killed at least two people and injured five others in Dushanbe, the capital of the central Asian nation of Tajikistan. The bomb went off in a shop and police quickly surrounded the building. It was not immediately known whether the blast was linked to the drug trade in the former Soviet republic. Tajikistan is a major route for narcotics from Afghanistan and has been overrun by crime since its independence. [end]
Long List Of Woes: Drought, Fighting Across Afghanistan Border, Drug Trade Threaten Nation MOSKOVSKY, Tajikistan -- The plowed earth waits for seeds and fertilizer that never arrive. Soviet-built irrigation aqueducts are crumbled and useless. Abandoned factories rust behind signs in bold red Russian. Able-bodied men spend their days in chilly bazaars, squatting beside used clothing and tools they hope to sell for pennies. This forlorn and wintry country in Central Asia is trapped in time. Its 6 million people are struggling to emerge from the physical and ideological ruins of the Soviet Union, which controlled Tajikistan for six decades, and to heal the wounds of a five-year civil war between ideological and ethnic factions that followed the 1991 Soviet collapse. [continues 657 words]
Dushanbe (Transcaspian project). Afghani drug dealers have not stopped their armed attempts to violate the Tajik-Afghan border to transport drugs into Tajikistan. The last few days were no exception. According to information from the Russian border guards in their Tajikistan press center, the Pyandzh border squad apprehended two armed intruders trying to leave Afghanistan for Tajikistan. During the detention attempt, the intruders opened fire on the frontier guards with rifles. The intruders managed to escape: under cover of darkness and the tangle of undergrowth. Packages with Afghani and Pakistani drugs were found on the site of the armed conflict: about three kilograms of heroin, and almost 2 kg of marijuana. [continues 282 words]
While the war in Afghanistan has been a major cause of concern to the region's former Soviet states, there are other trouble points as well. TURDIYEV, Tajikistan - A field of sun-parched brush separates Sayevali Abdulloyev's land from Afghanistan. He has surveyed this border from his farm in Tajikistan for 40 years, and has never crossed it. It terrifies him. War, drugs, religious strife - to Abdulloyev, it all comes from the other side of the barbed wire. The fighting in Afghanistan this fall has come so close to his village of Turdiyev that he hears the clap of artillery fire at night. [continues 953 words]
NEAR PIANDZH, Afghan-Tajik border, July 26 (AFP) Tajikistan authorities are fighting a losing battle to stamp out the growing trade in Afghan heroin which is financing the arms purchases of the Taliban rulers in Kabul. Drug seizures by Tajik authorities have doubled this year, but they represent only five percent of illegal drug shipments passing through the former Soviet central Asian republic, according to official figures. Seizures of Afghan heroin increased tenfold in 1999 in Tajikistan from 71 to 700 kilograms, but this year have already attained 700 kilos (1,550 pounds). [continues 344 words]
The presidents of Russia, China and three Central Asian countries, meeting in Dushanbe, pledged yesterday to fight terrorism, drug trafficking and separatism - and showed a common defensiveness about their human rights' records. In a joint statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and the other leaders expressed concerns about Islamic separatist movements in the mountain areas of Central Asia and agreed to set up a joint anti-terrorist centre in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. --- [end]
DUSHANBE, April 22 (Itar-Tass) -- Tajik policemen on Wednesday checked an attempt to traffic 13 kilograms of raw opium across the Afghan border in the Shuorabhad region in the south-east of Tajikistan. According to the Interior Ministry of the republic, the drugs were found in a hiding place of a Niva car belonging to a Tajik citizen. The driver was detained. Commenting on the incident, the press centre of the Tajik Interior Ministry told Tass that the drug trafficking had been sharply growing in scale in the republic. [end]
DUSHANBE, April 18 (Itar-Tass) - The United Nations fully supports the Tajik measures against the illicit drug trafficking and allocates 6.4 million dollars to the republic for that purpose, U.N. Undersecretary-General, Executive Director of the U.N. Drug Control Program Pino Arlacchi told correspondents on Sunday after meeting Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov. He hopes that the Central Asian republic will have a drug control institution. The United Nations and Tajikistan signed a program of the border control over the narcotic drug trafficking on Sunday. The program will pool efforts of the regional countries against the evil and hamper the drug shipment from Afghanistan to Tajikistan, Arlacchi said. [end]
DUSHANBE, April 18 (Itar-Tass) - Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov reaffirmed the readiness for a personal control over the fulfillment of international projects to counteract the illicit drug trafficking at a meeting with U.N. Undersecretary- General, Executive Director of the U.N. Drug Control Program Pino Arlacchi on Sunday. Arlacchi is currently in Tajikistan on a working trip. The president views the illicit drug trafficking as a threat to the peace process, security and stability of Tajikistan and the whole region, presidential spokesman Zafar Sayedov said. He regrets that "international drug dealers use Tajikistan for the illegal transit of narcotic drugs from Afghanistan to other countries of the world." Rakhmonov is interested in the U.N. assistance to Afghanistan in opening of a drug addict rehabilitation center. He thinks it important for donor-countries to join the drug control projects in Tajikistan. The republican ability to counteract the "narcotic drug attack" together with the international community depends on that, Rakhmonov said. [end]
DUSHANBE, March 9 (Itar-Tass) - Over eleven kilograms of narcotic drugs, including almost four kilos of pure heroin, have been confiscated by Tajik customs officers over the past day alone, Chairman of the Tajik Customs Committee Rakhim Karimov told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. Four young nationals of Tajikistan were detained when boarding the plane to Yekaterinburg on Monday morning on suspicion of smuggling narcotic drugs. About two kilograms of pure heroin were found in the men's stomachs in an X-ray analysis. A heroin pack unsealed inside one of the men and almost killed its carrier. The failed smuggler was taken to hospital with a grave poisoning. [continues 67 words]
DUSHANBE, February 7 (Itar-Tass) - Over 140 kilograms of drugs, including 15 kilos of heroin, were seized by Tajik police officers when inspecting a truck in the area of the Tajik-Uzbek border, Itar-Tass learnt from press service chief of the Tajik Interior Ministry Dzhumakhon Khatami. According to the press service chief, a police check point in the city of Tursunzade, bordering Uzbekistan, stopped last Wednesday a MAZ truck with Russian number plates for inspection. After the first inspection, Tajik detectives seized 103 packs (slightly over 100 kilos) of raw opium and marijuana. [continues 55 words]
DUSHANBE, January 26 (Itar-Tass) - A total of 2,600 grams of heroin were confiscated from two female passengers of a Dushanbe- Alma Ata flight at the Dushanbe airport on Tuesday, sources at the Tajik Customs Committee told Itar- Tass. The attention of customs officers was attracted by the nervous conduct of women, especially when a check-up of fruit bags began. It appeared that the narcotic drug was hidden in plastic bags inside the fruit. The women said they had been forced to take the drug by unknown armed men. They claimed they were only to bring the heroin into the plane and pass it over to certain people during the flight. The airport has toughened inspection of passengers and their baggage on the instruction of President Emomali Rakhmonov. [end]
DUSHANBE, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov said on Friday increasing quantities of drugs flooding into the ex- Soviet republic from neighbouring Afghanistan represented a social and security threat. "A danger has arisen for the young Tajik government and if it is not eliminated it will cancel out the progress we have made," he said at the opening of an international drugs conference in the capital, Dushanbe. The impoverished Central Asian state of 5.7 million people, which is fast becoming a major transit route mainly for opium and heroin from the south, was increasingly turning into a consumer. [continues 342 words]
DUSHANBE, - Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov will address the nation on Friday on the problem of illegal drugs which has acquired immense scope in the Central Asian republic. The address is to be made at the conference "Drug-free Tajikistan" in Dushanbe which is organised by the state commission on drugs control and the special UNO programme. It is to be attended by foreign ambassadors and international representatives accredited in Tajikistan. Tajik drug trafficking poses a serious threat to Russia. Early this year Moscow customs confiscated six kilogrammes of heroin which arrived from Dushanbe to the Domodedovo airport. Five Tajiks were detained on suspicion of drug trafficking. Before new year 800 grams of heroin were confiscated in the same Moscow airport. [end]
Inside Tajikistan
