Russia against drug barons
There are serious problems in relations between Russia and Afghanistan, and they have nothing in common with Islamic terrorism or the Taliban. Over the past four years, Russia has openly demanded that the United States make more efforts to stop the flow of heroin from Afghanistan. Russia even offered to provide intelligence about drug traffickers in Afghanistan. The Russian agent network has a sufficient amount of information about the groups of smugglers who transport heroin through Central Asia to Russia and further to Europe. But despite the fact that Russia has good sources in Afghanistan and the fact that this cooperation has caused tremendous damage to Afghan drug smuggling, the flow of heroin continues.
Drug dealers worry Russia more than the Taliban. Despite the fact that Russia has some problems with Islamic terrorism, heroin does much more harm. There are more than two million heroin and opium addicts in Russia and about 10 millions of such addicts in Afghanistan and the countries around it. In Afghanistan and neighboring countries, many government officials themselves are smuggling drugs into large markets in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and East Asia. All countries where these drugs are sold are very interested in stopping the production of heroin in Afghanistan, or at least in protecting their countries from smuggling Afghan drugs. However, corruption in many of these countries makes it difficult to fight the drug business.
Since Pakistan is the most corrupt neighboring country with Afghanistan, just over half of all Afghan heroin is shipped through Pakistan. The rest goes through Iran (on the way to a very lucrative market in the Gulf countries), Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Russia, and then to Europe. There are many smugglers in Afghanistan, but almost all of the opium (which is processed into heroin) comes from the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. These two provinces are also the birthplace of the Taliban and their positions there are strongest. This is not by chance. For more than a decade, the Taliban have been providing themselves with financial support for heroin trading. Only about ten percent of Afghans profit from the drug trade, while most of the rest themselves become victims of drugs.
Drug traffickers prefer to sell opium to the population in the region itself, because this drug is cheaper there and more often is used in the form of smoking, and not injections. This has a certain meaning, given the poverty of the region (Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on the planet). However, the export market requires heroin and morphine, for which opium is the main raw material. On the other hand, such production requires industrial chemicals, and these materials must be imported from abroad, and chemical mini-plants must be set up for the purification of drugs.
Heroin is much less bulky than opium, and is more convenient for smuggling. Of the ten tons of opium (priced at $ 99 per kilogram), you can make 1.3 tons of heroin (worth $ 2000 - $ 4000 per kilogram, depending on availability). This conversion requires 2.6 tons of acetic anhydride, an industrial chemical. This chemical is a flammable and poisonous transparent liquid when inhaled. In Afghanistan itself, the use of acetic anhydride is illegal. Because of the need to pay bribes and because of transportation costs, a ton of this chemical imported from Pakistan costs the drug dealers about $ 2000. It must then be smuggled into Afghanistan by truck. There is a limited number of roads with bribed border guards. Some more chemicals are needed to clean up opium (in morphine, and then in heroin), but the most difficult is to get acetic anhydride and it is needed in the largest amounts. In addition, a small amount of hydrochloric acid is needed, but it is a more affordable industrial chemical.
Over the past year, traffickers have earned about 2-s billion dollars from the sale of opium, heroin and hashish (a concentrated form of marijuana). This represents approximately 15 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP. Not all of this amount is a profit, at least half of it is necessary to pay poppy and marijuana farmers, opium processors for heroin and marijuana for hashish. After the transfer of drugs to neighboring countries, their value doubles and grows many times when they reach markets.
Pakistan has been trying to combat heroin trafficking since the 1990s, in particular by disrupting the supply of acetic anhydride. The heroin trade, like the cocaine trade in South America, brings with it another major problem: armed religious or political movements combine with drug gangs and, for a fee, ensure security of supply. Thus, the union of the Taliban and other Islamic terrorists with the tribes of drug traffickers who produce most of the heroin in the world is not unique. For decades after the end of the Second World War, most of the heroin was produced in small Burma (now Myanmar) - the Chinese border area, where drug gangs could afford to equip and maintain private armies, which even had their form and flags. But in the end, both of these countries dealt with the drug business, and it moved for some time to Pakistan, and then was forced to move across the border into Afghanistan. In both previous cases, control of the supply of acetic anhydride was instrumental in suppressing the production of heroin.
The Afghan government is not particularly keen on stopping the production and trafficking of heroin, partly because many high-ranking officials are now bribed, and partly because it will lead to an additional tribal war (most tribes oppose the heroin trade and only a few of the Pashtun tribes in the south control more part of the production of heroin). In addition, there is a possibility that the cultivation of poppy and the production of heroin will simply move to another Central Asian country. Islamic terrorists just follow him. So the problem really is to suppress or otherwise neutralize the Taliban, al Qaeda and other Islamic radicals who use drug production and trafficking to finance violence. The Taliban receive $ 50-100 million for protecting drug gangs. It also leads to hatred of the Taliban population throughout the territory of Afghanistan. But the Taliban cares little. They have always been a strong minority, preferring to call stah among the population rather than love or respect.
An interesting fact is that the two main sources of drugs are in small regions where the army does not work and there is a general lack of law and order. Cocaine mainly comes from Colombia, where drug gangs and their political allies (left-wing FARCs) almost put the government on its knees until politicians and most of the population did not rebel and began to fight back. In Afghanistan, the US and NATO command finally persuaded the governments of their countries to start a war with sources of financing: heroin trafficking.
This means that for almost a decade, the producers and distributors of acetic anhydride were under scrutiny and they were required to tighten control over the supply of chemicals to Afghanistan. Smugglers have proven more resourceful in using bribes and threats to circumvent government restrictions. The supply of chemical components to Afghanistan comes from the territories of all neighboring countries except Iran (having a small, incorruptible army on the border with Afghanistan trying to prevent opium and heroin). Acetic anhydride is often purchased in Europe or in Russia, labeled as other chemicals, and delivered to Pakistan or to one of the Central Asian neighboring countries of Afghanistan, where, for bribes or threats, it is delivered to laboratories in southern Afghanistan. Currently this smuggling network is under serious attack. Russia intends to control its growing problem of drug addiction by keeping smugglers (bringing in drugs and exporting chemicals) away from its border. But all these efforts are paralyzed by corruption and the lawless nature of the border areas. The example of Colombia shows that drug production can be resisted. But it’s not at all easy and progress is slow.
Russia and Iran are the two regional countries most actively combating heroin trade. Pakistan has several million drug addicts using opium, hashish and heroin, but the government and police are so corrupt that they make no real effort to stop the flow of drugs. The population of most countries in Central Asia is too poor to afford most of these drugs, even at low prices (due to proximity to the source). Large markets are far from Afghanistan, and all these countries would like to stop the flow of heroin.
Promises to eliminate drug addiction is one of the reasons why Islamic radicals get popular support. However, an alliance between the Taliban and drug gangs in Afghanistan is becoming widely known and convincing in the Islamic world. Islamic terrorists cannot simultaneously fight and support the drug business. Ultimately, they will have to choose which is more important to them: righteousness or wealth.
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