Moscow is beefing up its anti-drug rhetoric, taking aim at NATO’s inability to stem the flow of opiates northward out of Afghanistan. And Tajikistan looks like a target for the Kremlin’s interdiction plans.
On June 6, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Moscow is “not happy with what the world community [i.e. NATO] is doing in the anti-drug war" in Afghanistan, agencies reported. Without elaborating, he said Russia is ready to "make several counter-drugs rings around Afghanistan to intercept drugs."
It is unclear how Russia would make such a cordon without involving Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors, but Moscow is clearly frustrated with Tajikistan’s languid drug war. Indeed, Ivanov singled out Tajikistan as a primary trafficking conduit.
At least 30 percent of Afghan drugs transit Central Asia – most through Tajikistan – en route to Russia and Europe, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Yet Central Asian states only stop 5 percent of the flow. Russians consume 21 percent of the world’s heroin.
Has Moscow had enough? Some Tajiks think so.
The infamous Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky (a Duma deputy chairman) recently remarked that Tajikistan had failed to achieve statehood and should become a Russian protectorate. At the same time, Moscow banned Tajik nuts and dried fruits because of a polio outbreak in the country (no, dried snacks cannot transmit polio).
The gestures prompted an outcry in Tajikistan, leading one pundit to suggest that Russia is attempting “to speed up a change of power” in the country.
"In the past 18 years, the Russian press has never been critical to Tajikistan as it is now. This means that the stance of certain Russian officials and the Russian press and government on Tajikistan is [united]," political analyst Sayfullo Mullojonov told avesta.tj, the privately funded website reported on May 31 (via BBC monitoring).
Other Dushanbe-based analysts argued that Moscow is pressuring Dushanbe like never before.
"Obviously, [President] Emomali Rahmon no longer suits the Kremlin as a partner from Tajikistan and a process has started to influence from outside the situation in the country and create prerequisites for the change of power,” [political analyst Rustam] Samiyev said, according to the same Avesta report.
David Trilling is Eurasianet’s managing editor.
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