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Pakistan, Afghanistan unable to fight drug trafficking
TEHRAN (FNA) - Iran’s National Police Chief Brigadier General Esmaeil Ahmadi Moqaddam said on Tuesday that Pakistan and Afghanistan do not have the necessary energy to fight plantation, trafficking and trade of illicit drugs.
5/20/09|Tehran Times| News

Ahmadi Moqaddam made the remarks following a meeting here in Tehran with Under Secretary General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna and also Director-General of the United Nations Office in Vienna (UNOV) Antonio Maria Costa.

In his remarks to reporters, Ahmadi Moqaddam highlighted efforts by the UNODC director general to further activate the mechanism of Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan trilateral committee.

He also referred to the contents of his meeting with Costa, and said the UN official has come to Iran to attend inauguration of Zabol border crossing and to observe activities of Iranian police.

“Some issues, including the scale of (drugs) production in Afghanistan, the data on the illicit entrance of narcotics into Iran, the number of addicts and the operational and information cooperation were also followed up on the sidelines of the meeting,” Ahmadi Moqaddam added.

Costa, for his part, hailed Iran’s police and its Drug Control Headquarters (DCH), and stressed Iran’s pioneering role in fighting drug trafficking, highlighting that the Islamic Republic has so far invested a large volume of capital and human resources in the campaign against drugs while it has lost many of its police forces.

“I think Iran should be supported in this combat and we have trilateral cooperation among Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan to this end,” he stressed.

According to the statistical figures released by the UN, Iran ranks first among the world countries in preventing entry of drugs and decreasing demand for narcotics.

In November, Iran’s DCH announced that the country would seal all its borders within two years to control drugs smuggling.

Each year, the government spends hundreds of millions of dollars erecting barriers along the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan and pumping resources into checkpoints. Officials said the battle against drug addiction and trafficking costs Iran U.S.$1 billion a year.

According to the UNODC, these days, 93 percent of the world’s opium is produced in the neighboring Afghanistan, 60 per cent of which is destined for the EU and specially U.S. markets, and the main transit route is Iran, where the country’s dedicated police squad risk their lives to make the most discoveries of drug cargoes, disband drug-trafficking gangs and organizations and much more in a bid to rescue not only the Iranian youth but also all those who live in Europe and the U.S..

Iran has always complained about the EU and other international bodies’ lack of serious cooperation with Iran in the campaign against drug trafficking from Afghanistan.

Nat The Gnat

Yeah. I own everything after this post.

Funky999

A co-worker of mine is from Syria and he has told me numerous stories of drug traffickers in that country. They run towns, local police cannot stop them, cops or anyone standing in their way are kill-on-sight targets, they don't mess around. One of his stories was about a drug operation set up in an abandon building in town, he said the police came to raid the place and they just started throwing grenades out the windows at the police vehicles. These are his accounts but I trust they are probably an fairly accurate description of some of the drug violence that occurs in the middle-east. Sigh, I wish legalization and regulation would sweep the world, there wouldn't even be that story to tell.

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High till I die