The very best minds in the anti-narcotics business have gathered for a major conference in Moscow to talk about the drugs flow from Afghanistan – something that is far more destructive than terrorism.Heroin production and trafficking in Afghanistan is a huge business worth $60 billion a year and its participants have no intention of giving it up voluntarily. It is a large source of income for poor Afghan farmers and putting it to an end means finding new ways to earn for living for all those who currently cultivate opium poppy. This would mean re-building the whole economic situation in Afghanistan altogether, which is what the anti-drug conference is aiming to discuss.Heads from around 40 countries have gathered in Moscow to figure out how to win the battle against drugs, which is not getting any better according to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.“International terror organizations have settled down comfortably at the Afghan-Pakistan border, receiving massive financial support, which comes via drug dollars,” he maintained. “I would like to stress that the issue of Afghan drugs production and smuggling has exceeded the regional scale and is now a global threat. According to the UN study, Afghan opium and heroin have taken the lives of about one million people around the world. Isolated countermeasures can hardly bring tangible results. I believe that the problem is serious enough to be specially considered by the UN Security Council,” he concluded.According to Russian officials, it is the coalition forces headed by the US, currentlyconducting the War on Terror in Afghanistan since 2001, which has not been doing enough to battle drug production and trafficking in the country. As a result, the quantity of Afghan heroin is being pushed through Central Asian countries and the Caucasus to Russia, and then on to Europe.Russia believes the coalition contingent could be doing a lot more to prevent heroin trafficking. Instead, the War on Terror could be renamed the War on Drugs so that the coalition forces have a reason to remain in Afghanistan in the future.
RT
