Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan are doing “almost nothing” to stem the flow of drugs from that country.
Since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, Afghanistan's opium production has risen dramatically, and much of it makes its way to western Europe via central Asia and Russia. The cultivation of opium poppies was largely eliminated under the Taliban's religious policing, but farmers have resumed cultivating and harvesting the profitable crop.
“They are doing almost nothing there even to lessen the drug threat,” Mr. Putin said at a meeting with the head of Russia's drug agency, Viktor Cherkesov, referring to the U.S.-led international force in Afghanistan. “Our efforts through diplomatic and political channels are not achieving results yet.”
He said it was necessary to step up co-operation with all the countries involved in the anti-terrorism effort in Afghanistan, and especially to drive home to western countries that they, too, were threatened by the Afghan drug trade.
Mr. Putin said that Russian drug authorities should do a better job of informing the West of the drug threat they themselves face.
Mr. Cherkesov told Mr. Putin that experts estimate that 70 to 80 per cent of the opiates in Britain originate in Afghanistan.
UN surveys estimate that Afghanistan accounted for three-quarters of the world's opium last year, and the trade brought in the equivalent of $2.9-billion Canadian, more than half the nation's gross domestic product.
60
