DUSHANBE, February 5. /TASS/. Tajikistan’s Presidential Drug Control Agency (DCA) has not registered any decline in the volume of drug trafficking originating in neighboring Afghanistan, despite Afghan claims about a ban on the manufacturing of illicit drugs and data from relevant UN agencies, DCA Information and Analytical Center Head Mukbilsho Muyassar told the press.
"According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, opium poppy cultivation and opium production in Afghanistan has decreased by 95%, yet opioids, such as heroin and opium, as well as Afghan-made methamphetamine, are still flowing into Tajikistan, with the reason behind this being that Afghan drug manufacturers generate greater profits from methamphetamine production," he said.
According to recent reports by the DCA, clandestine synthetic drug labs have started to emerge in Afghanistan to produce these drugs, which are then smuggled into Tajikistan and later transported to other countries, the official noted. The agency clarified that more than 2.5 tons of illicit substances were seized from circulation in regions of Tajikistan bordering on Afghanistan in 2023, accounting for over half of all drugs seized in the Central Asian country in the previous year. Tajikistan has received no information on any counter-narcotics efforts being implemented by Afghan authorities, he added.
Last December, Atageldi Yazlyyev, director of the Central Asian Regional Information and Coordination Center for Combating Illicit Trafficking of Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and their Precursors (CARICC), also mentioned that despite analysts' estimates of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan plummeting, the center's statistics indicated an increase in opium trafficking. He attributes this to the need to dispose of reserves from previous years' harvests.
Afghanistan has been controlled by the radical Taliban movement (banned in Russia) since 2021. In April 2022, the Afghan Bakhtar News Agency reported that the Taliban had prohibited poppy cultivation across the country, promising to prosecute violators under Sharia (Islamic law). A ban was also imposed on "the use, transportation, trade, export and import of all types of narcotic drugs.".