Both Afghan Sides Involved In Narcotic Smuggling Across Tadjik-afghan Border

The Federal Frontier Service (FPS) has information that narcotics are being transported across the Tadjik-Afghan border by both the Taliban movement and Northern Alliance forces, Alexei Kozhevnikov, the deputy director of the Russian FPS, said on Tuesday. According to him, the growth in narcotics smuggling across the Tadjik-Afghan border will be monitored further, as it has become essential to the Taliban movement for the purchase of weapons and ammunition. In addition, over the past few years in Afghan territory, he remarked to the RIA correspondent, vast stocks of narcotics have been amassed. As a result of the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan the drug barons are trying to get rid of these stocks. Therefore, over the past 9 months border guards have impounded more than 5 tons of narcotics: 2.2 tons of heroin and 2.9 of opium.