President of Tajikistan opens counter-drug conference

Dushanbe, Tajikistan President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmanov issued a call to arms to the international community to act together in combating drug trafficking in his address to representatives from 10 nations attending the first in-region conference of the Central and South Asia Counter-Narcotics Security Working Group May 15.

"Drug trafficking is not merely the problem of Tajikistan, Afghanistan or other Central and South Asia countries. This is a global threat very similar to international terrorism. The drugs are flowing through Europe and other countries. None of us can independently win the struggle against this problem. We need the cooperation of all countries," Rahmanov said.
Rahmanov pointed to ways in which the international community has helped develop his country's capacity to counter drug trafficking.

"A prime example is the cooperation with the United Nations and other countries in the development of Tajikistan's Drug Control Agency. Today the agency is the key link in the development and implementation of the state's policy in the field of countering drugs," Rahmanov said.

Rahmanov noted that Tajikistan's ability to counter drug trafficking serves the entire international community.

In the last 10 years, Tajikistan has seized more than 60 tons of illegal drugs, 30 tons of which was heroin. This figure, according to Rahmanov, means that the drugs did not reach millions of people all over the world and several billion dollars did not end up in the hands of criminals.

United States Ambassador Anne Patterson, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and a panel member in the morning's second session, underscored that the dangers of drug trafficking are not limited by borders.

"[Drug trafficking] creates domestic markets for drugs, both in producing countries and along transit routes. There has never been a transit country that has not also experienced a rise in drug consumption within its own borders," Patterson said. She also cited the loss of legitimate economic opportunities, the rise of organized crime and increased demand on health care systems.

"Drug trafficking injects corruption into a society that is extremely difficult to root out, and can do so surprisingly quickly," she said.
Rahmanov challenged representatives from the 10 charter nations of the Counter-Narcotics Security Working Group to engage fully in the efforts to improve the mechanisms of regional cooperation against drug trafficking.
"You are here not to cite examples or figures, but to discuss how we will mitigate the problem of drug aggression in the region. The discussion of practical aspects of our interactions at this moment will become a pledge for our future."

More than 50 representatives from nations and agencies involved in counter-narcotics activities in Central and South Asia are participating in the working group meeting, which is being co-sponsored by the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, U.S. Central Command, and the Committee on State Border Protection of the Republic of Tajikistan.

The working group's three-day meeting is a follow-up to the group's inaugural meeting conducted in November 2005 at the Marshall Center in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Participants will present the results from the deliberations of the working group's capacity-building subgroup and visit a Tajik-Afghan border checkpoint as a model for border control cooperation.