Russia says US-led forces should stem Afghan heroin

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A top Russian drugs official said on Friday Moscow should stop the transport of cargo
across its territory to US-led forces in Afghanistan if they do not do more to cut the flow of heroin to Russia.
Earlier this year, Russia and its former Soviet allies in Central Asia established a transit route for non-lethal
supplies to the international forces in Afghanistan to complement a dangerous route via Pakistan.
Russia and its allies have become increasingly concerned at the growth in drug traffic from Afghanistan since
the overthrow of the Taliban.
They say it poses a grave regional security threat and has caused a heroin epidemic in Russia, which now ranks
as the worlds No.1 consumer of Afghan heroin.
The granting of transport corridors to NATO forces in Afghanistan should be conditioned on a commitment to
destroy sown areas, laboratories, stocks and other infrastructure of the Afghan drug business, Russias drug
enforcement chief Viktor Ivanov told a meeting with ministers and parliamentarians.
This would ... start the real process of improving the drug situation in Russia as well as in Central Asian and
European countries.
Citing United Nations data, Ivanov said Afghanistans output of opiates had grown more than 40-fold since 2001
when the US-led coalition launched its assault on the Taliban.
He said the 2008 raw opium crop totalled over 7,000 tonnes. The UN programme on fighting drugs has been a
failure. Today Afghanistan produces twice as much opiates as the whole world 10 years ago, Ivanov said.
The drug enforcement official said 90 percent of drug addicts in the country were using Afghan heroin. He
estimated Russia has up to 2.5 million drug addicts, mainly aged between 18 and 39, with their numbers
swelling by 80,000 a year.
Today it is self-evident to everyone that the state should take decisive emergency measures to prevent an
approaching national catastrophe, he said.
Some 30,000 drug users, aged an average 28 years, die in Russia each year. This compares to around 15,000
the Soviet Union lost during its Afghan war in 1979-89. Drugs from Afghanistan make their way to Russia and
further on to Europe via the porous borders of sparsely populated Central Asia. Ivanov said Russia could hardly
control its giant, 7,591-km (4,740-mile) border with Kazakhstan.
The share of Russias population using opiates mainly heroin is 5-8 times higher than the European
Unions average, and 20 times higher than in Germany, Ivanov said.
He cited expert estimates of giant opiate reserves held in Afghanistan, saying they were equal to one trillion
single doses, enough for Russia to be on the needle for a century.
The cash-strapped Afghan government, managing a budget worth a few hundred million dollars can hardly fight
alone against the drug business estimated at $100 billion a year, Ivanov said.
The international security forces are deployed in Afghanistan in line with a UN mandate, Ivanov said. It would
only be logical ... to include in their mandate tasks and responsibility for destroying Afghanistans drug
production infrastructure.