Russia, US carry out 4 joint operations against Afghan drug cartels

MOSCOW, April 21 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia and the United States have
carried out four joint operations against Afghan drug cartels over the
past four months.
Federal Service for Control of Drugs and Psychotropic Substances
(FSKN) chief Viktor Ivanov said that "the Russian-American group has begun
regular operations to destroy heroin supplies from Afghanistan".
"One of the operations has received wide coverage," he added.
"Between December [2010] and March of this year we created such task
force together with the U.S., Afghanistan and Tajikistan and carried out
four operations," Ivanov said.
The operations targeted drugs and laboratories that intended to supply
drugs to Russia. "Almost 1.5 million tonnes of heroin, 4.5 tonnes of
morphine and 300 kilograms of opium were seized," Ivanov said at a meeting
with President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday, April 20.
"This had a real effect on heroin supplies to Russia which did not
increase last year and actually slightly decreased," he said.
Medvedev said the "threat of drug proliferation has a global nature
and the overall amount of drugs from Afghanistan is growing" and "we must
fight Afghan drug cartels together with our partners".
Ivanov earlier called for creating a broad-based coalition to deal
with the Afghan narco-threat.
"The problem of Afghan drug production is not an exclusively Afghan
problem and has long become an international one. Moreover, it has assumed
a global dimension and can be solved only by an international anti-drug
coalition." Ivanov said.
Opium production has increased 40 times, and the latest assessments of
the effectiveness of anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan only "mislead" the
world public, he said.
"As we know, over the past ten years more than 1.6 billion U.S.
dollars have been earmarked for fighting drug production and trafficking
and 6-8 billion U.S. dollars for alternative crop farming. As a result, we
have to admit not just low effectiveness but negative results," Ivanov
said.
He suggested expanding the powers of the U.N. Mission in Kabul and
working out "a single international action plan" that would be formalise
"the political will of the international community to achieve the end
result by undertaking resolute action" and provide for the appropriate
"organisational and administrative tools" for implementing "a set of
adequate and effective measures".
Ivanov said that heroin production in Afghanistan has increased 40
times over the past ten years.