Summer 09.Qxd

David Lewis, senior research fellow in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, England, served previously as director of the International Crisis Group’s Central Asia Project, based in Kyrgyzstan. High Times on the Silk Road The Central Asian Paradox David Lewis In medieval times, traders carried jewels, seems like a major threat to the region, spices, perfumes , and fabulous fabrics along since it is so inextricably linked to violent the legendary Silk Route through Central crime and political instability in many other Asia. Today, the goods are just as valuable, parts of the world . More people died in but infinitely more dangerous. Weapons and Mexican drug violence in 2009 than in Iraq. equipment for American troops in Afghan- In Brazil , the government admits about istan travel from west to east, along the 23,000 drug-related homicides each year— vital lifeline of the Northern Supply Route. some ten times the number of civilians In the other direction, an unadvertised, but killed in the war in Afghanistan . And it ’s no less deadly product travels along the not just Latin America that suffers. On same roads, generating billions of dollars in Afghanistan’s border with Iran, there are illicit profits. As much as 25 percent of regular clashes between Iranian counter- Afghanistan’s heroin production is exported narcotics units and drug smugglers. Hun - through the former Soviet states of Central dreds of border guards have been killed Asia, and the UN’s drug experts express over the past decade in fights with heroin grave concerns . Antonio Maria Costa, head and opium traffickers. of the UN’s Office of Drugs and Crime But Central Asia’s drug trade looks (UNODC ), claims that the “Silk Route, rather different. A closer look reveals a turned into a heroin route, is carving out a murky world of corruption and official pro - path of death and violence through one of tection, with three strange and paradoxical the world’s most strategic, yet volatile re - outcomes. gions .” A report from his office asserts that there is a “perfect storm spiraling into Cen - Three Paradoxes tral Asia” with d rug trafficking funding ter - A Taliban prohibition on heroin production rorist groups and insurgency, fostering in - in 2000 was remarkably successful, reducing stability and conflict, and leaving a host of exports from the Afghan territories they health problems behind . This should be a controlled in 2001 to almost zero. But after wake-up call to Central Asian governments. the U.S.-led invasion, t he Taliban gave up Yet, oddly, nobody seems to care very much . their apparently principled stance against In theory, the United Nations is right to drugs, and reverted to an earlier position— be worried. At first glance, drug trafficking demanding a tax from both farmers and © 2010 World Policy Institute 39 traffickers, and sometimes providing logisti - tional Narcotics Control Board, in 2007, cal support and protection for cross-border only about 3.3 percent of an estimated 128 smuggling, under the profitable rationale tons of heroin trafficked through Central that it was non-believers who used the Asia was intercepted by authorities, a de - drugs. Production rocketed again, and ex - cline from a peak in seizures back in 2004. ports through Central Asia also shot up. That’s still better than in Afghanistan The United Nations and other experts ex - (where only a trifling 1 percent is seized), pected an accompanying rise in drug-related but well below Iran and Pakistan, which violence, but the reality was far different. average the interdiction of more than 15 There are no drug-related shoot-outs on percent of drugs that are produced or transit the leafy streets of Uzbekistan’s capital, through these countries . The decline in Tashkent. Drug gangs in Tajikistan do not seizure rates has occurred despite an influx shoot down police helicopters, as they did of millions of dollars of aid from the United recently in Rio. In fact, as the volume and States and other Western countries to the value of heroin transported through the re - border and law enforcement agencies of gion has risen, the level of drug-related Central Asia over the past decade. Hence crime has fallen . the second paradox: the more that’s spent In Tajikistan , drug-related crime (cover - to end the problem, the deeper the problem ing everything from low-level possession to becomes. trafficking) plummeted after 2001, from Central Asia offers one further paradox 1,949 cases to a remarkably low 726 cases that derails the official narrative. The ac - in 2006. This left UN experts puzzled. cepted wisdom on drug trafficking suggests “Given Tajikistan’s position as the drug that it undermines political stability and fu - gateway to Central Asia, ” they wrote in a els anti-government insurgency. Again, ac - recent report, “it is peculiar that drug - cording to the United Nations : “ drugs are related crime and convictions are the low- funding insurgency in Central Asia, where est in Central Asia .” But these declines the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the post-2001 are not confined to Tajikistan. Islamic Party of Turkmenistan, the East The same hold true across all Central Asian Turkistan Liberation Organization , and oth - states. Even where low-level drug crimes er extremist groups are also profiting from are uncovered, major trafficking figures the trade .” In reality, however, there is no are almost never arrested or charged. This ongoing armed insurgency in Central Asia . suggests the first paradox. The more drugs Today, all the extremist groups listed by the are trafficked through Central Asia, the United Nations are only marginally active lower the level of drug-related crime . inside Central Asian states . In fact, the The available statistics also point to a Islamic Party of Turkmenistan does not second paradox. While opium and heroin even exist . production in Afghanistan has increased markedly since the mid-1990s, and export The Bad Old Days through Central Asia has probably increased How do we explain these paradoxes in the proportionately more than production, drug shadowy world of Central Asian drug traf - seizures of opium by the police in Central ficking? To do so, we have to return to the Asian states has actually fallen (by about 1990s, when these new states were just one-third) in the period from 1996 to 2007. emerging onto the international scene, after Heroin seizures have also fallen, although decades of isolation from their southern not by as much. According to the Interna - neighbor. During much of the Soviet period , 40 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SPRING 2010 ©AP/Misha Japaridze On the Tajik-Afghan border, the finest security money can buy. the border with Afghanistan was closely tional smuggling routes through Iran and guarded, with almost no cross-border trade Pakistan that had flourished for decades. To or travel. The first period of renewed inter - the north, however, once the Soviet Union action came in the 1980s, when Soviet imploded, arrangements became much more troops were fighting a desperate war against chaotic. Former Communist Party bosses the mujahidin in Afghanistan. Some Soviet were still trying to work out how to run veterans also brought back, however, a taste independent countries and stay in power. for opium—widely used historically in the Their nations’ economies had virtually region as a traditional medicinal and recre - collapsed , security forces often did not get ational drug. Its refined form, heroin, was paid , and border guards were left to their much less known, but much more potent. own devices. Not surprisingly , some turned At first, small amounts were brought back to smuggling drugs. Initially, local security by war veterans, but quickly the potential personnel , border guards, and enterprising for making quick profits from the drug villagers along the frontier dominated a trade became clear, and criminal gangs fairly small-scale trade. But local criminals took over. soon made international connections. Turk - At first, drug trafficking along this ish drug gangs linked into a route through northern route was fairly ad hoc. Most Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and the Afghan opium producers used the tradi- Balkans. Russian criminal groups benefited High Times on the Silk Road 41 from a route that passed through Uzbek - less Saparmurad Niyazov, Turkmenistan had istan, Tajikistan (where Russian troops con - become a closed dictatorship by the mid- trolled the border until 2003), Kyrgyzstan , 1990s. Niyazov pulled billions of dollars and Kazakhstan . from Turkmenistan’s massive gas fields, but To be fair, the UN assessment about the wasted much of it building rotating gold connection between drugs and violence was statues of himself, and paying for his own right, at least for a time in the 1990s. A book of philosophy, the Ruhnama , to be growing trade in narcotics combined with launched into space. But the gas income the inability of weak central governments to was clearly not enough. According to a for - exercise power over restive regions fueled in - mer chairman of the Turkmen Central Bank stability . In Tajikistan, rivalry over resources who later fled the country , millions of dol - led to a vicious civil war from 1992 –97; lars worth of Afghan heroin was being drugs played an important role in prolong - stored in Niyasov’s personal vault . Other ing the conflict. Warlords linked to both dissidents reported that there were stashes sides used trafficking revenues to supply of drugs stowed deep in the presidential their forces with arms and ammunition . In palace. As usual in Turkmenistan, informa - the late 1990s , drugs began to fund Islamic tion is hard to verify. But these revelations militants in the region. Insurgent groups and others suggest the degree to which the such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan state was involved in protecting a criminal (IMU ) held territory in northern Tajikistan business network.

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