Non-Subscriber Extract
Traffickers turn from Balkan conduit to 'northern' route
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| 22 October 2001 |
By Tamara Makarenko (JIR, August 2001)
A lucrative drugs market and a desirable standard of living has ensured that Western Europe remains an important destination for illicit narcotics and illegally smuggled and trafficked migrants. Although a variety of routes are utilised to bring these commodities to Europe, most official attention over the past decade has been focused on the 'Balkan' route - originally established to transport Southwest Asian heroin to Europe via Iran and the Balkan peninsula. By 1991, Interpol deemed this route responsible for 65% to 75% of all heroin seized throughout the continent and by 1994 it was known as an important conduit for smuggling and human trafficking.
Ten years later many Western criminal intelligence agencies still regard the Balkan route as the most active trafficking conduit. Despite this sustained widespread belief, several factors strongly suggest that illicit opiates from Afghanistan (and Pakistan) are increasingly being routed through what is referred to as the 'northern' route. As Marc Pasotti of the United Nations Centre for International Crime Prevention stated during a conference in Hungary in 1998: "The Central Asian CIS republics and Russia are being increasingly used as a shortcut for heroin supplies to Western Europe in place of the Balkan route." Recent evidence uncovered also suggests that the northern route is increasingly being used for illegal human traffic.
Three major factors have been responsible for the growth of northern routes: the Iranian counter-narcotics initiative; increased opium production in Afghanistan; and the post-independence environment in the former Soviet Union.
Early indicators
Supported by the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), the government of Iran embarked on a strict anti-narcotics campaign in the mid-1980s. Iran has constructed a system of channels, concrete dams, sentry points and observations towers, in addition to regularly deploying over 30,000 law enforcement personnel to guard its Afghan border. This has enabled the government to disrupt a relatively significant portion of illicit narcotics traffic through its borders. The 204.5 tons of opium Iran confiscated in 1999 represented over 80% of the total global opium seizure.
Although Iranian efforts have not completely eliminated trafficking through its borders - government officials estimate that no more than 20% of drugs are seized - by the early 1990s interdiction efforts had placed a considerable strain on the trafficking operations of criminal groups. Traffickers, in search of ways to diversify their risk, were therefore forced to locate addition routes that could be used to successfully transport shipments of illicit opiates originating from Afghanistan.
The second factor responsible for attracting traffickers to the northern route was increased opium production in Afghanistan - especially in the country's northern regions. According to UN statistics, the production of opium in Afghanistan has steadily grown since 1988. Between 1988 and 1991 it increased 100% and between 1991 and 1999 production grew from an estimated 2,000 tons to a record 4,600 tons. Thus by the end of 1999, Afghanistan produced approximately 75% of the global supply of opium.
Rising production in Afghanistan is an important factor primarily because it acted as a catalyst for traffickers to locate new routes in order to ensure that rising supplies reached external markets - a necessary requirement to maximise profits. By the end of 2000, the UNDCP (now the UN Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention) estimated that only 20% to 30% of Afghan heroin was transported to Europe via the traditional Iranian-Turkish route, and at least 50% of heroin consumed in Europe travelled via Central Asia.
Given events in Iran and Afghanistan, northern routes through the Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) and Russia were extremely attractive to traffickers for a variety of reasons. The successor republics that emerged from the demise of the Soviet Union not only covered a very large geographic area but had extremely porous borders. For example, border guard units and customs service in Central Asia were not established until 1993-4. Even today they remain ill-equipped, underfunded and undertrained in countering illicit trafficking.
A second factor attracting the exploitation of northern routes was, and continues to be, the deteriorating regional socio-economic situation throughout much of the former Soviet Union. In Central Asia - the first leg of the northern routes - unemployment rates are high and low/unpaid wages remains a common problem. The UN Human Development Report estimates that approximately 80% of the population in Tajikistan and 30% in Kazakhstan lives below the poverty line.
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| Russian border guards lead a drugs courier, arrested near the village of Elton at the Russian-Kazakh border, to a helicopter before questioning him at the regional border post on 12 June 2001. (Source: PA News) |
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| Given events in Iran and Afghanistan, northern routes through the Central Asian republics and Russia have become attractive to traffickers for a variety of reasons. Economic, social problems and the growth of organised crime throughout the former Soviet republics have contributed to the growing shift of illicit trafficking from Balkans to northern routes. (Source: Jane's) |