In southern Kyrgyzstan, drug trade and Islamic extremism find fertile soil

AFP ^ | Sun Mar 27, 4:10 PM ET

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OSH, Kyrgyzstan (AFP) - In an grassy field littered with garbage and needles on the outskirts of Kyrgyzstan's southern capital Osh, a heroin addict named Alik mused at how the revolt that brought down his Central Asian nations government had also cleared the area of any sign of police.

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"I wish this would last forever," Alik said after injecting a 0.5 gram dose of heroin in an area know as "the pit" -- a spot where many of the city's 15,000 drug users inject heroin because approaching police officers are visible from hundreds of yards away.

Protests that brought down the regime of Askar Akayev, accused by his opponents of rigging a parliamentary election earlier this month, also sent the regime's police packing and created a law enforcement vacuum that western observers fear will leave drug trafficking unchecked and give Islamic fundamentalists a foothold in the region.

In a country with a population of just five million there are some 80,000 to 100,000 hard drugs users, according to government data.

Users like Alik are among the human side effects of Kyrgyzstan's geography which places it squarely on the route for opiates being transported from Afghanistan (news - web sites) to western markets.

"This is the Silk Road for heroin, so it's very cheap here," said Elmira Osmanova who works in a needle exchange program called Parents Against Drugs which fights to stave off a burgeoning AIDS (news - web sites) epidemic among the city's drug users.

Some 60 percent of the opiates produced in Afghanistan make their way west through the mountains of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan with Osh as a major transit point, according to the United Nations (news - web sites) Office for Drug Control.

The United States, which sees the trade in heroin as a potential source of financing for terrorist organizations, allocated 6.3 million dollars (4.9 million euros) for creation of a drug control agency in Kyrgyzstan last year.

Since its inception in May, the agency has confiscated an estimated 30 percent of the total amount of opiates transported through this region each year, according the head of the agency's southern branch, Sytyn Ismailov.

Ismailov said he had no hard evidence linking drugs trafficking with political or religious extremism in Kyrgyzstan but suspected that, as in Afghanistan, drug money and militant Islamist groups were connected.

Since the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan -- an Afghanistan-based group linked to Al-Qaeda -- launched an armed incursion into Uzbekistan through the Osh region in 1999, the area has become a focal point for international efforts to contain extremism and drug trafficking.

It was unclear if a new permanent government in Kyrgyzstan would be able to deal with the twin challenges of drug trafficking and political extremism, but organized crime bosses said they were doubtful much would change.

"The laws of the criminal world will stay the same -- cruelty and justice will remain," one of Osh's four drug barons told AFP inside the nondescript apartment block from which his syndicate operates in the city.

"Initially the political changes will hurt my family, but we will find common ground" with whatever new authorities emerge, he said, suggesting that deals protecting the drug trade have long been made with local law enforcement officials.

According to Ismailov, a kilogram of heroin costs just 5,000 dollars in Osh, but just over the mountains in Bishkek the price nearly doubles, making illicit trade in the substance irresistible to many residents in a region where the average wage is under 3,000 dollars per year.

Poverty has also provided inroads for fundamentalist parties like Hizb ut-Tahrir, or "party of liberation," which calls for the creation of a pan-Islamic state governed by the rules of Islam.

Though it is not considered a terrorist organization because it does not call for violence, the party has criticized the United States for opening air bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and was banned by the government of Akayev and the authorities in neighboring Uzbekistan who considered its popularity to be a threat to their rule.

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deals protecting the drug trade have long been made with local law enforcement officials.

According to Ismailov, a kilogram of heroin costs just 5,000 dollars in Osh, but just over the mountains in Bishkek the price nearly doubles, making illicit trade in the substance irresistible to many residents in a region where the average wage is under 3,000 dollars per year.

The War On Drugs is a war on the law of supply and demand.