MOSCOW, November 26. /TASS/. Terrorist grouping Islamic State delivers half of all heroin in Europe, chief of Federal Service for Control over Drugs Circulation Viktor Ivanov said at a meeting of the co-ordinating council of drug control chiefs in member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in the Russian capital on Wednesday.
An alarming outcome of 13 years of NATO military operation in Afghanistan is that a well-developed grouping of anti-governmental armed formations had emerged with a total numerical strength of more than half a million gunmen, Ivanov said.
“Meanwhile, on the one side, mentioned armed contingent is logically involved in highly profitable drug production and international militarized drug transit as its military component, and, on the other side, serves as an endless source for recruiting mercenaries in regional conflicts in Central Asia and the Middle East,” he noted.
“This is absolutely obvious that without a crackdown on a large-scale Afghan drug production conflicts in these regions cannot be settled. This is massive Afghan heroin transit that serves as replenished financial base for the Islamic State which earns exorbitant profit thanks to making half of all heroin supplies to Europe through destabilized Iraq and several African states,” the Russian drug control chief noted.
