Turkmen Police Held for Drug Trafficking

An investigation implicating police in Turkmenistan in drug trafficking has brought a long-concealed issue out into the open, say NBCentral Asia observers.

Details of how many police officers were arrested and the nature of the charges have not been revealed. All that is known is that a group of officers of various ranks are facing imprisonment.

At a May 12 session of Turkmenistan’s State Security Council, President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov said the cases indicated how low morale was at the interior ministry, under which the police operate.

NBCentralAsia analysts say the president’s public admission that police were conniving in trafficking shows that the illegal drugs trade has reached serious levels in Turkmenistan.

Observers in the Ahal and Dashoguz regions, in the south and north of Turkmenistan, respectively, say drugs are becoming increasingly available.

The country has a long border with Afghanistan, the world’s major producer of heroin.

“In some places, [drugs] are being sold like sunflower seeds – openly and without fear,” said a commentator in Ahal province.

The first major efforts to fight trafficking were launched in 2008, a year after Berdymuhammov took over as president from the late Saparmurat Niazov. The authorities subsequently established a National Drug Control Service, and tasked it with coordinating the anti-narcotics work of the various law-enforcement agencies.  Special taskforces consisting of large numbers of personnel, vehicles and helicopters were established in every region to pursue the war on drugs more effectively.

The authorities announced that imprisoned drug traffickers would no longer be eligible for amnesty, and started burning confiscated drugs consignments in public – three tons went up in flames in the course of 2009.

A clash between alleged drug gangs and police in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat in September 2008 indicated that organised criminals were under pressure.

Although a concerted war on drugs began only after Berdymuhammedov came to power, there were some high-profile prosecutions in Niazov’s time.

A staff member at the Ashgabat prosecutor’s office recalled cases in which relatives of Gurbanbibi Atajanova, a former prosecutor general now in prison, and several senior officials from the interior ministry and National Security Service were involved in trafficking heroin and other hard drugs.

Insider sources in Ashgabat say that several years ago, about 20 twenty officers and NCOs at a prison hospital in Mary province were jailed for selling drugs to inmates.

Other cases have implicated staff from a special department of the interior ministry that looks after border areas, and narcotic control officers who sold on some of the heroin they had confiscated during arrests.

The recent Security Council meeting suggests that the drugs trade is thriving.

“Even policemen on the beat are involved in drug dealing,” said a source, citing information from the police. “Some of them take bribes and turn a blind eye to people growing cannabis and opium poppy on abandoned land plots in the countryside.”

As in other countries, local officials and police can get rich on the proceeds.

“It’s a hugely profitable business,” said a local observer.

Towards the end of March, the US embassy in Ashgabat conducted a series of seminars for local officials on how to fight drug trafficking. The US has also provided testing equipment to determine the presence of narcotics.  

However, the stringent checks and other measures funded as part of international anti-narcotics projects are not always an obstacle to the illicit trade.

“The problem is that these technologies and systems are being used by Turkmen specialists who are sometimes unable to resist temptation, for various reasons,” said a local media expert. “Even if a state-of-art system detects drugs in a container or in luggage, it’s always possible come to an arrangement and bribe one’s way out of it.”

This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.