Russia to be able to train Afghan drug police without NATO

SIMFEROPOL, April 2 (Itar-Tass) - Head of Russia’s Federal Service for Drug Circulation Viktor Ivanov believes that Russia will be able to train Afghan drug policemen without NATO. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stated earlier that NATO hoped for co-operation with Russia on Afghanistan despite halt to all military and civilian co-operation with Moscow. He noted that Russia would continue freight transit for NATO in Afghanistan for joint training of drug police for Afghanistan on maintenance project of Soviet and Russian aircraft in the country. Commenting on this NATO position the chief of the Russian drug watchdog said that it evoked “a dual feeling.” “We have been proposing already for five years that an official of the Russian drug watchdog will work in the Russia-NATO Council to orchestrate the work. Our proposal is denied. Meanwhile, we want to co-operate. We [Russia] are training drug police in Afghanistan ourselves. But does this make sense to organise this work in Russia-NATO format? We do not need this logo,” Ivanov said on Wednesday. Russia has repeatedly voiced concern over a drug threat coming from Afghanistan that had been growing for a decade of NATO command over the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the country. The Russian drug watchdog estimates drug transit supplies from Afghanistan at 80 billion dollars annually. According to the drug watchdog’s chief, Afghanistan produces 150 billion doses of heroin every year and other three thousand tonnes of pure heroin are stored at Russian borders. From the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 the United Nations Organisation has reported a skyrocketing growth of heroin production in Afghanistan by more than fortyfold. For the last year alone opium poppy crops went up by 36 percent to 209 thousand hectares. “The world and Russia face the heritage of worldwide drug production growing with the connivance of the United States and NATO,” Ivanov said. Russia proposed to the Group of Eight [leading world powers] and NATO to form an international headquarters for the fight against Afghan drug making producing a plan for destruction of drug crops back in 2010 under the programme of Afghan economic upsurge through infrastructure development and to include in the mandate of international forces in Afghanistan the duties to eliminate drug crops. However, in the view of Viktor Ivanov, the West did not intend to settle the problem of world drug production. Therefore, Russia also can rely on the BRICS states [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa] and the countries bordering drug-producing states. Viktor Ivanov is a co-chairman of the working group for counteraction to illegal drug circulation at the Russian-U.S. Bilateral Presidential Commission which was formed in 2009. Director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy Gil Kerlikowske heads the working group from the U.S. The head of the Russian drug watchdog voiced concern repeatedly that Washington lacked a strategy in the fight against Afghan drug cultivation. The general secretary of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a Eurasian security bloc, Nikolay Bordyuzha, is convinced that the ISAF force was not tasked at all to create even larger problems to the U.S. with support of members of drug cartels to Taliban militants. “International forces did not fulfil tasks to ward off a terrorist threat which may be creeping in the region and make current risks stronger,” Kazakhstan’s Ambassador in Tajikistan Agybai Smagulov said at the March CSTO conference in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe. Learn more on itar-tass.com