Outside Help Needed for War on Drugs
Wednesday, 4 July, 2007
Outside Help Needed for War on Drugs
Wednesday, 4 July, 2007
On June 26 in the village of Kasamly Julge near the capital Ashgabat, the authorities destroyed over a ton of narcotics which had been confiscated by Turkmen law enforcement agencies during a special operation.
The event was timed to mark an international anti-narcotics day, and was attended by government members, foreign ambassadors and members of international organisations.
On June 24, President Berdymuhammedov heralded the beginning of “full-scale war” on drug addiction, and told the interior and national security ministries to draw up an action plan “to completely eradicate this most dangerous social vice”.
Berdymuhammedov has repeatedly criticised law enforcement agencies for lax practices. On April 9, he sacked Interior Minister Akmamed Rahmanov because, he said, the police had “failed to combat drug-trafficking” and had “fused with the criminal world”.
Under the rule of the late president Saparmurat Niazov, who died in December 2006, the issue of drug addiction was kept quiet and only discussed at the senior leadership level.
NBCentralAsia observers say that the sheer scale of drug trafficking and addiction within Turkmenistan shows that the government cannot deal with the problem alone and should start cooperating with all its neighbours to clamp down on the illicit drugs trade.
“The situation is critical,” said an NBCentralAsia observer based in Turkmenistan. “It’s possible there isn’t a family which doesn’t have some relative who’s a drug addict.”
The spread and availability of narcotics stem from the fact that Turkmenistan borders on Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opium. The problem is compounded by corruption in the Turkmen law enforcement agencies and the reluctance of officials to get to grips with the problem.
There are no official statistics on the number of people addicted to narcotics in Turkmenistan, even though that it has been involved in the anti-narcotics programme of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe since 2000, and has been implementing a national programme to combat drug trafficking and addiction for the years to 2010.
Local observers say drug addiction is growing at an alarming rate, especially among young people aged between 14 and 25 living in rural areas.
One commentator said people are ill-informed about the dangers of drug abuse, and both government and international campaigns are just for show. There is no effective wide-ranging programme to unite the efforts of teachers, journalists and law enforcement agencies, this observer said.
Another observer in Ashgabat agreed, saying that now the authorities have at least recognised the extent of the problem and acknowledged that it poses a threat to the state. But the president will need external support to pursue his “war”.
“It is likely that Turkmenistan will sign up to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s [anti-narcotics] programmes, and also step up efforts to combat drugs in Afghanistan along with NATO,” the observer said.
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
