CIAO DATE: 5/00

Drug Trafficking on the Great Silk Road: The Security Environment in Central Asia

To address drug proliferation and trafficking in the context of non-traditional security threats and to try to find ways out of the potentially explosive situation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sponsored a meeting of representatives of the five Central Asian states, Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, the United States, the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Aga Khan Development Network, held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in May 1999. This paper analyzes the situation in the region based on the conference proceedings and aims to raise international awareness of the seriousness of the problem. It also advocates the need for a concerted effort within the region and without to help these countries fight this evil. Central Asia has recently emerged as a major international drug trafficking center. According to United Nations drug control experts, 80 percent of heroin consumed in Western Europe originates in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 1 One half of these drugs (about 120 tons of heroin equivalent per year according to some estimates) travels to Europe via Central Asia, a dangerous cargo to pass along the revived ancient Great Silk Road. Such drug trade is imperiling the health of these newly independent states in a number of different ways. Drugs undermine weak states, and the developing situation in Central Asia is following true to course. Deteriorating economic conditions throughout much of the region are tailor-made to the needs of the drug industry. Economic necessity makes police and border guards more receptive to bribes and ordinary citizens more willing to take the risks associated with the transport or cultivation of drugs. The presence of drugs brings with it organized crime. These criminal groups are sometimes able to find potential partners among some of the regionšs opposition forces. This is especially true of anti-system groups that have little or no chance of gaining political access to political power under the current circumstances. The most extreme Islamic radical groups are thus attracted to alliances with the drug trade, as are those that seek guns and other weapons. The increased presence of drugs in Central Asia has also created an expanded drug problem among the Central Asian population; this problem is fed in part by the fact that for the first time heroin is being refined in significant quantities in the region. The growing drug problem puts a further burden on government budgets, increases crime rates and diminishes public safety, raises levels of domestic violence, child abuse, and costs of health care, stimulates the rapid spread of several deadly infectious diseases, and further decreases economic productivity. The Central Asian states lack the funds and technical expertise to wage a successful war against drugs. Most of the governments in the region also lack the will power to do so. There is a dangerous cycle developing. Weak regimes are reluctant to take the political risks associated with tangling with a dangerous opponent, but the organized drug trade is rapidly becoming a more powerful presence in the area, and the political risks of engaging with them will only increase over time. International assistance could help address the funding and technical problems associated with combating Central Asiašs drug problem, but the United States in particular still lacks sufficient incentive to do so. Fighting drugs is a major U.S. concern. The annual federal drug budget for law enforcement has grown from roughly $53 million in 1970 to more than $8.2 billion in 1995. 2 In the past decade, U.S. (federal) spending on international drug control, including interdiction efforts, reached nearly $20 billion. 3 However, very little of this money is targeted to Central Asia, whose drug trade and industry is not considered to be a direct threat to the United States. European states are more directly engaged, largely through the auspices of the United Nations and Interpol. To date, their efforts have been underfunded and marked by the frustrations produced by engaging with governments that are unable or unwilling to take comprehensive measures to address the problem. The drug problem is still a relatively new one for the Central Asian region. Until the last years of communist rule, drug use in the Soviet Union was nowhere near as wide-spread as it was in the West. In fact, official propaganda portrayed addiction to drugs as a ŗcapitalist disease˛ that could not spread to the socialist world. 4 All data concerning drug trade and the number of drug addicts was classified and considered to be a state secret, making it almost impossible to estimate the number of drug addicts in the USSR. The beginning of the war in Afghanistan, however, changed the status quo, since many of the Soviet soldiers who fought in Afghanistan got addicted to opiates. They also established business relations with the Afghan drug producers, some of whom continue to serve as a source of the present expanded drug trade. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the map of the world has been changed forever. New states have emerged, borders have opened, and new relations have been established. Unfortunately, this has also meant more opportunities for drug trafficking and proliferation. This is especially true because the newly independent states of Central Asia cannot easily cut themselves off from the situation in Afghanistan. The proliferation of drugs is undermining Central Asian society. It is a blight on the economic and social environment and a threat to the traditional system of values. Drug addiction damages the physical, psychological, and emotional health of whole pockets of society, wreaking particular havoc on the younger generation. Central Asian society is at risk from drugs in a number of different ways. The flour-ishing drug trade in the region enables separatist, radical religious, and terrorist move-ments that have already sprung up in Central Asia to become financially self-sufficient.