The Overlooked Frontier: Tajikistan

I’m heading off to Tajikistan in a few weeks for some summer fieldwork, so I’m delighted to see a mention in the MSM about one of my topics of interest: the corrosive effects of narco-trafficking on the country and the need for external actors to step up assistance in this area. From The Washington Post (via Reuters):

Almost two decades after Tajikistan’s independence from Soviet rule in 1991, diplomats and drugs experts say the poor Muslim country may be fighting a battle it cannot win as corruption seeps deeper into society. Western powers worry that drugs-related corruption may undermine stability in this tiny but strategic country whose calm is key to Western efforts to build law and order in Afghanistan.

“It’s something that’s definitely frightening,” said a senior Western diplomat in Tajikistan who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. “The system itself has become incompetent, alarmingly so. That money is funding further corruption. Laws have no power here.”

With treacherous terrain, leaky borders and lawlessness inherited from the 1992-1997 civil war, Tajikistan is a haven for drug smuggling from Afghanistan, which produced a record 8,200 tonnes of opium last year. With an increase in illicit poppy cultivation of 17 percent in 2007, Afghanistan accounts for 93 percent of the total illegal global market in opiates, the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board said in its annual report in March.

Tajikistan says it seizes 60 percent of drugs passing through its territory. Diplomats say the figure is closer to 10 percent.

Much attention is rightfully paid to attempts to curtail poppy production in Afghanistan, but until someone sorts out that conundrum it’s clear that greater efforts are needed to disrupt the supply chain snaking through frontier states like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It’s true that the UN, the EU, the US and Russia have provided significant funding and assistance to beef up Tajikistan’s borders, but as long as a Tajik border guard earns less than $30 a month and his country sits next to Zimbabwe on the Transparency International corruption index, the drugs are going to get through.

As in Afghanistan, there are no simple answers. Tajikistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world; its political elite, dominated by ex-communists, is stagnant. (President Rahmon has been head of state since 1994, and won another seven-year term in 2006.) Political repression and economic deprivation are the order of the day for the Tajik population and must be addressed alongside shorter-term interdiction efforts. The potential for Tajikistan to descend into further lawlessness and instability, on the border of a state already gripped by lawlessness and instability and in a region beset by criminal and militant actors, should provide some incentive for international donors to stay in for the long haul.

FYI: A brief Channel 4 News report from Khorog can be found here.