DUSHANBE, July 2, 2010, Asia-Plus — Drug mafia was involved in last month’s violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, Nikolai Bordyuzha, Secretary-General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), remarked at the 8th session of the CSTO Coordinating Council of heads of the competent authorities to counter drug traffic (KSOPN) in Dushanbe on July 2.
“My trip to the Kyrgyz zone of conflict gives me reason to say that drug mafia was involved in those events,” Bordyuzha said.
According to him, southern Kyrgyzstan may be said to turn into one of the main route for smuggling Afghan drugs into Kazakhstan, Russia and Europe. “We have to discuss measures to shut down this channel,” Mr. Bordyuzha stressed.
The head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) Viktor Ivanov supported the CSTO secretary-general.
Drug lords were actively involved in violence in southern Kyrgyzstan because it is good fishing in troubled waters, Ivanov said, noting that money earned by drug trafficking played a certain role in destabilization of the situation in southern Kyrgyzstan.
In the meantime, Kanybek Nurmatov, the deputy chief of the main drug control directorate within Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Interior, told reporters that drug mafia was involved in last month’s violence in southern Kyrgyzstan to a certain extent but mainly through financing disorders. “It could be organization of delivery of weapons and pouring of money,” he said.
Nurmatov, however, considers that there was no advantages to drug lords of Kyrgyzstan in those disorders. “The drug trafficking channel will be shut down and they will just lose. That is why I did not say that drug mafia was directly involved in violence in southern Kyrgyzstan.”
