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Радио The Voice of Russia: научный сотрудник ИМЭМО РАН Игорь Игоревич Хохлов комментирует рост производства героина в Афганистане

Добрый день, мои уважаемые подписчики. Вас приветствует постоянный ведущий крупнейшей в мире политической рассылки на русском языке Национальная и государственная безопасность кандидат политических наук, научный сотрудник Института мировой экономики и международных отношений Российской академии наук Игорь Игоревич Хохлов. Интервью по афганскому наркобизнесу достаточно старое - у меня все не доходили руки выложить его в своей рассылке - но, к сожалению, "воз и ныне там".

Полный текст интервью Игоря Хохлова на радиостанции The Voice of Russia

Almost ten years after the US- and British-led antiterrorist operation in Afghanistan ousted the Taliban government, if not al- Qaeda, opium production this year is poised to reach a record 61 hundred tons which is enough to produce 610 tons of heroin.

General Alexander Mikhailov with the Federal Anti-Drug Service says that this is three times the volume of drugs Afghanistan produced before the allied invasion of five years back.

Five years on, Afghanistan has regained its status of the world’s number one provider of opium poppy. Igor Khokhlov, a senior fellow at the Institute of Global Economy and International Relations in Moscow, say that, according to expert estimates, Afghanistan now accounts for a hefty 87% of the world’s heroin consumption and nearly 100% of Europe’s.

According to various estimates, the annual output of heroin and other opiates is currently between 4,000 and 10,000 tons.Reasons for this are many, first of all, the American and their allies have been forced to buy the loyalty of the local field commanders by shutting their eyes to the only source of these people’s income. On the other hand, the considerable volume of heroin production in Afghanistan posed no direct threat to the United States, Russian researcher Igor Khokhlov says.

The Afghans are consistently expanding their opium poppy fields at the expense of other crops trying to cash in on the ouster of the Talebans and to get back to the Southeast and central Asian markets they lost during the Islamists’ rule. Now experts all agree that Afghanistan is once again on the way to becoming the world’s number one producer of heroin. Overall, the situation now is much worse than it was at the start of the US-led invasion and the opium fields are getting increasingly closer to the Russian borders too. Experts say that an estimated 40 tons of heroin go across Russian territory each year.

The Federal Anti-Drug Service boast up to 80 percent of illegal drug confiscations and 60 percent of drug-related crimes solved here in Russia. Since January FADS agents have confiscated more than 80 tons of narcotics and psychotropic substances which is more than a billion shots.

In other words, we now have a truly critical situation in Afghanistan where the absence of centralized government makes an efficient drug-busting a mission impossible. Also because illegal drugs are the backbone of the national economy and the impoverished country’s only competitive export.

Научный сотрудник Института мировой экономики и международных отношений Российской академии наук Игорь Игоревич Хохлов комментирует рост производства в Афганистане за последнее десятилетие..