Poppy field kyrgyzstan. Scarlet poppies of Issyk-Kul, or secret springs of heroin expansion. NATO base: was the game worth the candle

I have heard the name of Lake Issyk-Kul since my school days, but then there was a big country called the USSR. And when a couple of years ago my friends told me that they had a rest on this wonderful lake, I did not immediately understand that this was not Russia, but another state - Kyrgyzstan. In June 2009, having studied the reviews of tourists, we compiled our own car route about 2000 kilometers long. It turned out that our path will pass through two state borders: Kazakh and Kyrgyz. We already had the experience of crossing the Kazakh border, nothing complicated, we are peaceful people. The only problem that could arise was the queue at the entrance to the border checkpoint. The Tyumen-Cholpon-Ata journey took two days, while on the first journey we stopped in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, to go with the children to the aquarium, which I didn’t really like this time, for some reason the marine life became much smaller.

Road

I want to say that in general the roads in both states are very good. I have already talked about the road to Astana: straight, flat, wide. A funny story happened to us: upon arrival in Astana, we were stopped by police officers and demanded to remove the tinting from the side windows of the car. It should be said that in the country you will not find tinted cars, AT ALL, that is, even some kind of "thieves". It's forbidden and everything. We tried to convince the employee that the technical inspection was passed in Russia, the norms were not violated and we were moving through their country in transit, that is, in a few hours we would be in Kyrgyzstan, we had to call a senior policeman who agreed with us and recommended in a whisper if we see a post police on the road, open the side windows all the way so that the tinting does not catch the eye. We've done this a few times and it's been a breeze. But on the way back near Astana it was drizzling and it was cool. At the sight of the police on the road, we opened the windows out of habit, but were stopped. The employee said with a smile that he guessed about the tinting, because in such weather it is unlikely that we are hot in the car. So with tinting in Kazakhstan is impossible! When leaving the country, we saw that the Russians entering right at the post just barbarously rip off the film.

And behind Astana towards Kyrgyzstan (Temirtau, Karaganda, Balkhash, Birlik, Chu, Georgievka) the road is also good, and what I like the most is very little transport, because this is not the most populated part of Kazakhstan. It seems to me that if I set a goal, I could calmly count the cars passing by.

There is nothing special to look at along the way: bare steppe, sometimes mountains. But sometimes there are interesting man-made objects.

But thanks to the flat landscapes, there is just an endless sky, and in Russia there are constantly copses, settlements, but here - one sky. There are a lot of graves along the road: small and not very small fenced turrets, some of them are made of brick. Often there are lonely graves, to which white steps lead, since they are buried on hills.

On the way we passed a very large Lake Balkhash: there are many industrial enterprises on the shores, a cement plant is being built, so there are no resorts or health resorts. True fish are sold, big and tasty.

We also learned an interesting fact about the roads of Kyrgyzstan, which, probably, could be used in our country in the summer. In the daytime, the movement of heavy vehicles is prohibited so that the asphalt inflamed by the sun does not deform under their weight and ruts and bumps do not form on the road. Therefore, truckers rest during the day, and at the time when we are looking for a parking space, they go on the road. I liked this rule: they don’t interfere with us during the day and don’t spoil the road.

We passed the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border without problems and we had, as it seemed to us, a small rest of the way. But when we drove into the mountains shortly after the border, the speed decreased noticeably, because the roads are winding and narrow, but very beautiful. I have a dream: I want to see a poppy field in bloom. At the entrance to the highlands of Kyrgyzstan, we saw fields of blooming red poppies high in the mountains, just large squares of red. I so hoped that I would still have the opportunity to see poppies in Issyk-Kul closer, but alas. Either we did not go there, or they have already faded. There were only scattered poppies, and not only red, but also yellow.

At the entrance to the Issyk-Kul zone, there is a nature protection post, at which we paid a certain amount, I don’t remember exactly how much. I must say that the defenders of nature at one time managed to defend the shores of the lake from the placement of enterprises there that would pollute the water. In Kyrgyzstan, there is even a law prohibiting people with tents and cars from camping on the shores of the lake (to avoid pollution with household waste). Although I think that it is uncomfortable to live in tents on this lake, because it is located, as it were, in a hollow, around the mountain, and after sunset it becomes cold, although it is very hot during the day. In general, police officers pay close attention to cars with Russian numbers in Kyrgyzstan. And not only the traffic police, but also just operational services passing by. But they communicate kindly, one traffic police officer in the city met us every day, for the first two days he stopped and checked the documents, and then remembered and greeted us at the meeting.

We arrived in Cholpon-Ata at the beginning of June, the season was just beginning, so we were able to rent inexpensive, very decent housing: a two-room apartment for 700 rubles per day. In the season (July-August) they are rented for $100 per day, because the owners built this annex for 4 rooms two years ago. We parked our car right in the yard, next to the owner's. The annex is located near the master's house, opposite their dining room. This is a two-story building with 4 rooms. On each floor there is a common hall with a refrigerator, a sofa, and then separate rooms. In the first room there is a large table with dishes, two beds, a cabinet with a TV. It is clear that many Russian channels are working. The second room has a wardrobe, a large double bed. The toilet is all tiled, there is a shower cabin, there is always hot water, because there is a water heater. The renovation has been good. The hosts are hospitable people, but once again we did not pester each other.

Our house was opposite the boarding house, with the administration of which the owners had an agreement on the unhindered passage of vacationers through the territory to the beach. So our five-minute path passed through the well-groomed flowering territory of the boarding house to the same clean shore of Lake Issyk-Kul with crystal clear water. I believe that the lake and its surroundings are the most beautiful place in the world. I have already said that the lake is located, as it were, in a hollow, surrounded by mountains. The weather often changes: sometimes the sun, sometimes clouds come in an hour, the wind rises. Moreover, the sun illuminates the peaks of the mountains in different ways: either they are hidden in the clouds, or their snow-white peaks are visible, or the mountains turn bright green. Very beautiful and beyond words.

The water in the lake is very clear and very cold. But it is so enriched with various salts and minerals that the body quickly adapts to cold temperatures, it is very pleasant to swim, and I read in the literature that it is very useful.

The ultraviolet is very strong: in the morning I went out into the street in a tracksuit, it soon became hot, I stayed in a T-shirt, after half an hour the T-shirt remained on my skin until the end of the vacation.

In the morning we ate at home, at lunch and in the evening in cafes, of which there are a large number. On the main street, we found a cafe where we spent the largest number of meals, because the owner of the cafe cooked himself stunning dishes of national cuisine, and not only those that are on the menu. We agreed with him for a certain time and upon arrival we felt like the dearest guests: fried manti, shish kebab, bishbarmak, samsa, other national dishes, and what kind of cakes they bake in their oven! They left with a bang! The meat is juicy, tasty, grown in clean mountain meadows. I have only exclamatory epithets for local dishes. Children at home are often picky about food, they were the first to cope there. Fairs are held in the neighboring village on weekends, where you can buy inexpensive things, delicious fruits, as well as dairy and meat products.

We also arranged several excursions for ourselves.

Grigorievskoe gorge

It is located not far from Cholpan-ata, there are signs where to turn off. You have to pay to enter the territory at the booth, but the fee is not fixed: they say the price, and we reduce it by half. And so everywhere: take pictures with a falcon, ride horses and a donkey, a market in the mountains. As soon as you stop, they immediately surround 20 people with animals and offer their services, but not very intrusively. I was surprised by the appeals: “Sister, a white horse for you” or “Brother, ride.” Somehow related. Everything there is unrealistically beautiful: mountains, slopes, meadows, a white raging river, the sky.

The film by Bolot Shamshiev with the wonderful Suimenkul Chokmorov in the lead role, released in the era of the “Kyrgyz film miracle”, was called a little differently. He talked about the fight against opium smugglers in the 20s of the last century. The well-known director wanted to continue this theme in one of his last works, The Wolf Pit, but at the insistence of the leadership of the republic, he was forced to change the script: at that time it was supposed to be considered that the problem of drug addiction did not exist in the Soviet Union.
More than half a century ago, poppy heads were a common attribute of children's games, and musicians of those years also used them as Latin American maracas. It was not difficult to get such "toys" and "musical instruments". It is enough to go to Issyk-Kul and stop at poppy crops and pick up an armful of stalks with heads, as they say, as much as there are enough hands. Several grams of opium were openly stored in the homes of Kyrgyzstanis for treatment.

The mid-sixties... Kyrgyzstan remains the only republic of planned production of raw opium for medical purposes. Poppy was grown by about 80 collective farms and state farms. For example, in 1965, its sown area in the Issyk-Kul basin alone amounted to 6,700 hectares. Opium is a labor-intensive crop, all processes - cutting poppy heads, collecting frozen latex - were carried out manually and only at dawn. During the harvest campaign, poppy farms often lacked labor, so they usually attracted schoolchildren and strangers. During the period of mass harvesting of raw opium in the Issyk-Kul region, the number of its pickers reached 50 thousand people, in such conditions it was simply impossible to ensure reliable protection of the plantations. Neither raids, nor arrests, nor watchtowers could stop the theft of opium. The picking women hid it in their hair, in their bosoms, in the diapers and clothes of their children. Often, entire units of collectors, whose members were related, became participants in the group theft of the potion. Opium was usually stored under a dog kennel, buried in the ground, garbage cans, hidden in baby cradles and loaves. The raw meat was digested in basins with the addition of concentrate and rolled into jars.
Almost every village in the Issyk-Kul region had its own unspoken leader, who controlled the supply of stolen opium to the capitals of the Union republics. It happened that drugs were stolen at the transshipment base in Rybachye, from the warehouses of Lecrarest in Frunze, and at the pharmaceutical plant in Shymkent, where they were delivered. Opium was stolen in grams and flasks, for which drug dealers went to bribery and murder, and its transportation was carried out in thermoses and suitcases with a double bottom, in bread and sausage, in books and chicken eggs. Dodgy opium speculators, in order to protect themselves, offered the holiday-goers going home to send parcels with the famous Issyk-Kul chebak to their relatives for big money, but in fact they were stuffed with opium. There was even one terrifying case in terms of the way drugs were transported. It was passed from mouth to mouth by the drivers of the Rybachinsky Avtovneshtrans. In August 1969, one of the drivers of this car company took pity on a young woman with a baby standing on the highway and undertook to give her a lift to Frunze. During the journey, he noticed that the baby did not make a sound, and the mother did not try to feed him. At the post at the Red Bridge, a vigilant driver reported the suspicions to the police officers. As a result, it turned out that the woman was simply carrying a child's corpse, which served as a hiding place for 2.5 kg of opium found in it during the check. These are the extremes that the drug dealers went to in order to deliver their "valuable" cargo at any cost.
This case, in its cynical sophistication, overshadowed even the tragedy of 1932, about which little is known, since the activities of law enforcement agencies in the fight against drug trafficking in the 30s of the last century were forced to be covert. All materials about the drug business were classified and were not included in the statistical data. Criminal cases on the theft and smuggling of opium, court records some time after the entry into force of court decisions were destroyed. Therefore, police officers fought against social evil, which, as it were, did not exist. However, significant volumes of opium confiscated from smugglers testified to a fairly wide spread of this type of crime.
That year, members of the criminal investigation department in one of Frunze's houses detained a group of criminals with large quantities of opium. During the search, they found about 20 pounds of this potion, three revolvers with 26 cartridges. The opium belonged to Lektekhsyry and was seized by the criminals while transporting it in the Tokmok region. The bandits killed two guards and massacred their families. Echoes of this crime backfired in 1936.
Then in Frunze, the pharmacist Norenberg, her husband Liang Yun Fu and their five accomplices were detained for opium speculation, for several years they had been exporting at least five pounds of raw opium from the republic to the cities of Central Asia, the Far East and Eastern Siberia for several years. In addition, drug traffickers kept dozens of opiomucuriles in the capital in the hidden slums of the Blacksmith's Fortress, on Karpinka and in Rabochiy Gorodok. The defendants were seized more than a ton of digested opium, a large amount of powdered potion, morphine, heroin, cocaine tablets, kumgans, chilims, medical syringes, loose gold, tsarist coins and 400,000 Soviet rubles. During the investigation, their involvement in the organization of the attack and the murder of two police officers who accompanied the raw opium Lektekhsyrya five years ago became clear.
According to the party’s position that there is no and cannot be a problem with drug addiction in the USSR, in the 1960s, the theft of raw opium, in accordance with the current Criminal Code, was considered as speculation and an encroachment on the people’s good, therefore drug crimes were dealt with by departments to combat the theft of socialist property. But, remaining a closed topic for society, drug addiction grew at a frantic pace from year to year, stimulating serious crimes and involving a large number of young people in its networks. Moreover, labor productivity on farms and enterprises was falling sharply, collective farmers drugged up by drugs did not go to work in the field for weeks, drug treatment dispensaries were overcrowded. The same thing happened in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, where raw opium stolen from Kyrgyzstan was delivered. The head of the republic, Turdakun Usubaliev, asked the center to stop the production of raw opium, but due to a shortage of foreign currency for the purchase of morphine abroad, this request was rejected. The only thing Moscow helped at that time was that every year during the opium harvest period, about 700 cadets from the police schools of the Union republics were sent to guard the plantations.
On December 11, 1962, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Kirghiz SSR, considering drug addiction as a serious social problem, issued a Decree "On intensifying the fight against theft, illicit manufacture, acquisition, storage and sale of opium and other narcotic substances." It provided for the responsibility of farm managers for the protection of opium plantations and the preservation of the harvest. The Criminal Code was supplemented with three new elements of drug-related crimes. The facts of the theft of opium were widely discussed at general meetings of collective farms and enterprises, and open trials were held. They created a special commission of the Police Department of the Ministry of Public Order of the Republic to prevent the loss and theft of raw opium. She did not work for long and, having not justified her hopes, in October 1963, by order of the government, she was abolished.
Fighting “fartsovka” and stopping the drug business are two completely different areas of police work. In the arsenal of the OBKhSS employees there was neither accumulated experience nor special training for investigating drug crimes. As Leonid Zelichenko, a veteran of the internal affairs bodies, recalls, police officers often never saw opium, did not know its color and smell. And this greatly complicated the work of combating the transportation of the stolen potion. Employees of the railway police at that time did such an experiment. They put raw opium in a bag and, under the guise of passengers, drove with it to Tashkent. The car was full of a sharp specific smell, they were repeatedly approached by police officers, but no one detained them. But in the storage room of the Tashkent railway station, they refused to accept a container with a potion, cutting off: “We take opium in luggage ...”.
Over time, new methods of operational work using special means were introduced in the republic to combat the drug business. In March 1966, a group of trainers began an experiment to train sniffer dogs to detect opium. The four-legged "sniffers" trained according to a special technique proved to be excellent in their work, but, unfortunately, the promising undertaking of the police department of our republic did not find support from the Union Ministry of Internal Affairs, although later this experience was adopted and introduced into police practice.
According to Alexander Zelichenko, a well-known specialist in the field of combating drug trafficking, the mid-1960s became a temporary frontier, when control over the sphere of criminal drug business passed from lone drug dealers to organized criminal groups with immeasurably greater financial and technical capabilities. One of these drug gangs was exposed in March 1966. During the special operation of the OBKhSS, codenamed "Korobochka", the police detained about 50 opium dealers, seized more than 100 kilograms of opium, a large number of gold items and several firearms. Then the leader of the criminal community Alexei N. managed to escape. He was arrested later, during the so-called "market riot" in the central collective farm market in May 1967. He was involved in the case as one of the organizers of the attack and arson of the building of the Frunze Department of Internal Affairs. In the same year, an attempt to transport drugs by air was stopped for the first time. At that time, it was difficult to detect them due to the lack of special equipment and technology. However, thanks to a well-planned operation, OBKhSS operatives under the leadership of L. Kilin, right in the cabin of the aircraft, detained several drug couriers with a large amount of raw opium. Only one of them, a resident of Namangan R. Makhmudov, was seized 13 kilograms of “goods” packaged in leather bags and another 5 kg tied to his feet with footcloths.
Since 1960, on the initiative of the OBKhSS employees, quarantine posts have been set up on the main highways. So, in the village of Chaldovar from April 1963 to March 1966, 40 drug couriers were detained and a total of 180 kilograms of opium were seized. From year to year, the influx of drug traffickers from other republics of the USSR increased, and the number of groups engaged in drug trafficking increased markedly. Since 1965, over five years, 68 criminal drug groups have been liquidated, more than 300 of their members have been detained, and about a ton of raw opium has been confiscated. If in 1961 130 criminal cases were initiated for drug crimes, then in 1964 there were already 350.
In April 1966, an inter-republican conference on the fight against drug addiction, theft and distribution of drugs was held in Frunze with the participation of response workers of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the heads of police departments of ten union republics. This indicated that the problem of drug addiction began to cause concern in the highest echelons of power. During the meeting, the leadership of the Kirghiz SSR again made a proposal to stop the production of opium on the territory of the republic, but again it was not heard. By the way, one of the supporters of the ban on opium cultivation in Kyrgyzstan was the father of the current Minister of Internal Affairs, Yesenzhan Atakhanov. In 1963, he led the investigation into the so-called Bacillus case. A criminal group - about 200 people, operating in the system of the Ministry of Health, through labeling launched especially valuable medicines that had become unusable through the pharmacy network of the republic and beyond. I had to study thousands of case histories, conduct numerous examinations with the involvement of prominent pharmacologists, biologists and chemists. The investigation was carried out in the strictest secrecy: a leak of information could provoke panic among the population. In 1964, also under the leadership of E. Atakhanov, a criminal group of opium addicts of 170 people, led by a drug tourer from Tashkent K. Juraev, was exposed. They seized more than 3 kilograms of opium, valuables, weapons, described several mansions in Namangan, Tokmok and Frunze.
By solving such crimes, the OBKhSS operatives gained experience and became experienced drug fighters. L. Kilin, A. Batyrshin, B. Orozov, T. Yahyarov, B. Moldokulov and others had hundreds, if not more, of solved drug crimes. The operations they developed to neutralize stable drug groups in the 60s became teaching aids for the current cadets of the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the secondary school of the police.
In 1969, by order of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, the functions of organizing the fight against drug crimes were transferred to criminal investigation units, and a year later, separate structures appeared in the system of internal affairs bodies specializing only in combating drug trafficking (OBN). Realizing that drug addiction crossed the borders of the Central Asian region and became a nationwide problem, in 1974, with the permission of Moscow, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kyrgyzstan decided to stop the cultivation of opium poppy. Then in the USSR, according to official figures, there were 48,000 drug addicts.

For several months now, a “message” from Doctor of Medical Sciences Professor Jenishbek Nazaraliev to presidential candidates has been circulating on social networks, in which he suggests that the future leaders of the country adopt his ideas, which will be able to develop the economy of Kyrgyzstan. Nazaraliev puts forward the thesis of creating a pharmacological and cosmetology industry in the republic based on the cultivation of raw opium. According to his approximate calculations, Kyrgyzstan will receive an income of $15-20 billion a year from this.

About how relevant the idea of ​​Dr. Nazaraliev to grow opium poppy in Kyrgyzstan is at the present time, website asked the director of the Central Asian Center for Drug Policy, retired colonel, candidate of historical sciences Alexandra Zelichenko.

Alexander Leonidovich, now some politicians, who once even aspired to the presidency, are proposing to boost the country's economy by reviving the industry of growing raw opium. What do you think about this?

Here you can not do without a little historical digression. It is known that Kyrgyzstan has been sowing poppies for many years. It began under the tsar-priest, at the beginning of the 20th century, when the First World War broke out and Russia really needed morphine purely for medical purposes. It was bought in Turkey until they switched sides. Other countries also bought morphine. Therefore, Russia was forced to look for places where poppies can be sown. And I found it - Issyk-Kul turned out to be an ideal place for growing opium poppy. And from then until 1973 it was grown there.

Opierobstvo was a whole branch of agriculture in the USSR, it flourished not only in Issyk-Kul, but also in Naryn and Talas. The Kirghiz SSR provided 16% of the world harvest of raw opium.

There was a Zonal Experimental Station of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Medicinal Plants at Issyk-Kul. New varieties of opium were bred there. Many collective farms grew only by growing raw opium. But then came 1974. And the USSR, at the request of the UN, stopped growing opium, since a significant part of the opium went to the black market. Until independence, this issue was no longer raised.

During this time the world has changed. Terrorist organizations have emerged, organized transnational criminal groups have emerged.

When in 1991 Kyrgyzstan began to look for an economic basis for independence, many remembered the successful experience of growing opium in the republic. And since then, this idea has been raised with enviable constancy. And not only here, but also at the international level. In the same year, on behalf of the president, a working group was created to work on this issue and assess all the risks and benefits from growing raw opium in Kyrgyzstan. I was also a member of this working group from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

We then proved that in all respects it is more profitable for the Kyrgyz people to plant potatoes than opium poppy. And this is not hyperbole. This is a real fact that we have arrived at by investigating the problem.

- Explain how the working group came to this conclusion?

Will explain. During Soviet times, crops in Issyk-Kul were protected only during harvesting. Militias were catching up from all over the Soviet Union. Cynologists with dogs patrolled everywhere, posts were placed around the entire perimeter. At the time of the harvest, Issyk-Kul became a zone of increased attention. But even so, about 50% of opium went to the black market. So it's all cost-effective from the point of view of the mafia.

When, in the early 1990s, there were only rumors that opium would be grown in Issyk-Kul, real estate prices there instantly skyrocketed. People came from abroad, left deposits to the locals. They said that when it was necessary, we would come and buy your houses and plots.

If we talk about the protection of opium plantations today, using high-tech technologies, then it will take us as much money as this opium is not worth. And if we harvest in the old-fashioned way, then we will lose not 50% of opium, as in Soviet times, but at least 70-80%.

Another problem is that we will simply have nowhere to sell the grown opium. Already at the dawn of Kyrgyzstan's independence, powerful analgesics, non-addictive, not based on opium, were actively used in developed countries, the world gradually switched to them. If then they were very expensive, now the process of their production has been established, they are becoming more and more affordable.

It's clear. From an economic point of view, growing opium in Kyrgyzstan is unprofitable. And how it can be reflected in the image of the country?

As a country treats drugs, so does the international community treat it. This simple truth should be very clearly understood. If a country sells drugs right and left, then it will be treated accordingly - as a pariah country, a bandit country and a drug dealer. Does Kyrgyzstan need such an image? It turns out that even if we can grow it, we will sell it at dumping prices. But we will overnight turn into a drug lord country, where there will be a base for terrorism and a base for transnational organized crime.

- And what is happening now with drug trafficking through our country?

Currently, drug trafficking goes through Kyrgyzstan only through a small part of its territory. But even so, we are experiencing the terrible consequences of drug corruption, "red" heroin (heroin, which is sold by the police. - Approx. ed.). And if we also start growing opium poppy, then I am not even able to predict the consequences of this step. But I can state with confidence that the Batken invasion of 1999-2000, when the militants were trying to find new ways to supply Afghan heroin, will become a "lightning bolt" compared to what we can get.

Therefore, every time when another politician, public figure, using cheap populism, tries to influence people who are very poorly versed in this issue, I start sounding the alarm, because I understand very clearly what this can lead to.

BISHKEK, June 1 - Sputnik. The sharply increased flow of drugs in Kyrgyzstan is the price that our country has to pay for supporting the "anti-terrorist operation" in Afghanistan, said Dmitry Fedorov, an expert and former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

White poppies of the USSR

Our republic accumulated vast experience in the fight against drug trafficking back in Soviet times, because in the USSR it was practically a monopolist in the cultivation of opium poppy. If, given the realities of the present day, the number of drug addicts then was negligible, then the number of plunderers of raw opium and its transporters was much higher.

It was this color that poppies grew in Issyk-Kul on the fields of collective farms and state farms, and the collected opium was sent to the Chimkent Pharmacological Plant to obtain medicines. Vacationers took away with them as souvenirs beautiful large poppy boxes with visible beautiful notches from a knife, which remained after being cut to extract and collect the milky juice.

It is also interesting that the fight against the drug business in the USSR for a long time was carried out not by specialized units and not even by the criminal investigation department, but by the service to combat the theft of socialist property and speculation (BHSS). And it was quite successful, however, in the face of the impossibility of physically ensuring the safety of the crop over vast areas and preventing mass theft, in 1974, in agreement with Moscow, the leadership of the republic decided to stop the cultivation of opium poppy. Of course, thickets of wild-growing hemp remained, but the situation improved before our eyes.

Hard drugs were forgotten, it seemed, forever, until the Soviet Union collapsed and a trickle of opium, and then heroin poured out of Afghanistan.

Black tulips of Afghanistan

Over time, a tiny stream turned into a powerful stream, and what yesterday was considered a huge lot, today is already ordinary volumes. The question arises: how did it happen that the number of arrests and seizures of drugs increased several dozen times, and the volume of heroin production in Afghanistan - more than 40? What events contributed to this and what happened in Afghanistan?

According to McCloy, the number of addicts in Pakistan itself rose from almost zero in 1979 to 1.2 million addicts in 1985, a much faster increase than in any other country.

The drug trade was controlled by people connected to the CIA. When the Mujahideen seized some territory in Afghanistan, they forced the peasants to sow opium poppy as a "revolutionary tax".

On the other side of the border, in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates, under the auspices of Pakistani intelligence, controlled hundreds of heroin labs, the security official said.

In a decade, the US Drug Enforcement Bureau's office in Pakistan has not seized a single large consignment of heroin or made a single arrest.

When asked why the cultivation of opiates increased sharply after the American occupation, UN Under-Secretary-General for Drug Control, MEP Pino Arlacchi replied: "No one wants to talk about it, but a secret agreement was reached between the George W. Bush administration and the Afghan warlords." .

In McCloy's assessment, US officials refused to investigate allegations of drug trafficking by their Afghan allies because US policy was subservient to the interests of war against Soviet influence in Kabul, which was present in the form of a limited contingent of Soviet troops.

Although the role of the CIA is reflected in numerous documents, it is not mentioned in the materials of the UN, where the emphasis is on internal factors. The resulting and laundered narcodollars were used to fund rebels in Asia and the Balkans.

In a Time magazine article dated July 29, 1991, a US intelligence officer confirms that "dirty money" was converted into "secret money" through banks in the Middle East and CIA front companies that supported insurgent groups during the Soviet-Afghan war.

By the mid-1980s, the CIA office in Islamabad was one of the largest in the world. The US turned a blind eye to the drug trade in Pakistan because it wanted to supply the Mujahideen in Afghanistan with Stinger missiles and other weapons and needed Pakistani help, the intelligence officer said.

The indirect American intervention in 1979 was followed by an unprecedented rise in Afghan opium production, and the same thing happened after the American invasion in 2001.

You should not be surprised by such increases in volumes. They are merely replicating the situation in other drug production sites where America has used military or political force.

This was in Burma in the 1950s, where, due to CIA intervention, production increased from 40 tons in 1939 to 600 in 1970; Thailand - from 7 tons in 1939 to 200 in 1968; and Laos - from less than 15 tons in 1939 to 50 in 1973.

A striking example is Colombia, where since the late 1980s, under the pretext of a "war on drugs," the United States has actively intervened using its military forces. At a conference in 1990, Scott predicted that this invasion would be followed by an increase, not a decrease, in drug production. Colombian coca production tripled between 1991 and 1999 (from 3.8 to 12.3 thousand ha), while opium poppy production increased 5.6 times (from 0.13 to 0.75 thousand ha) .

american shield

We figured out why the volume of production increased. Now let's ask ourselves the question: why is no one fighting on the spot, and the zone of responsibility there is American?

Heroin is a multi-billion dollar business with powerful interests behind it. According to Interpol experts, worldwide revenues from the sale of Afghan heroin amount to more than 650 billion dollars a year.

During the stay of the US and NATO military forces in Afghanistan, the production of heroin in that country has grown, according to general estimates, by 40 times.

One of the covert goals of the war in Afghanistan was to restore the CIA-controlled drug trade to its previous levels and gain complete control over the drug supply routes.

Thomas Schweich, a former assistant to the head of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the US State Department, published an article in The New York Times in July 2008 in which he stated that Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Pentagon were in every possible way preventing a serious fight against opium production in Afghanistan.

An article by University of Ottawa professor Michael Hossudowski emphasizes that since the US entry into Afghanistan in October 2001, the drug trade has increased dramatically.

The American press, followed by all sorts of "experts" and "analysts" in their reports and statements began to assert that Osama bin Laden and the Taliban were behind this. Of course, they also contain the usual "balanced" self-criticism, but they do not mention that in 2000 the Taliban regime, in cooperation with the UN, introduced a very strict ban on the cultivation of opium poppy. As a consequence, opium production fell by 90 percent in 2001.

The UN General Assembly recognized the successes of the Taliban in the fight against drugs in the same year. With the fall of the Taliban regime, a boom in drug production began again, and the US justified itself by saying that the Taliban simply wanted to create a shortage of drugs and raise world prices, which was denied by the UN office, which found out that the Taliban were not engaged in the accumulation of opium.

Do not be surprised - the United States is interested in directing the flow of heroin to China and Russia.

Viktor Ilyukhin, Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on Security, noted that requests to intensify the fight against drug production were sent to the United States. However, he said, their responses were vague, saying that they are still considering their options and worried that such actions will push the peasants into the arms of the Taliban. However, to put it mildly, these arguments are very weak.

Viktor Ivanov, director of the Federal Drug Control Service of the Russian Federation, told reporters that he did not understand why the United States was in favor of the destruction of coca crops in Colombia, while in Afghanistan they did not want to take such measures?

"Okay, we have disagreements on the issue of the destruction of poppy plantations," Ivanov said, "but why isn't NATO destroying the laboratories?"

According to him, there are more than 200 giant laboratories in the mountains of Afghanistan where concentrated drugs are produced, but no one touches them. The conclusion suggests itself that there is no fight against the manufacture of drugs at all.

Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vitaly Churkin stated "complete inactivity" of the NATO military contingent in this area.

Speaking before the UN Security Council, he said that the latest data from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is shocking. In particular, compared to 2013, the area under opium poppy cultivation expanded by 7 percent, its average yield increased by 9 percent, and in the southern regions, by 27 percent, and by 17 percent, the volume of drug production increased.

At the same time, the permanent representative noted that Russia is "increasing its efforts in the field of combating illegal drug production and trafficking" through the SCO, the CSTO and through bilateral relations with Kabul.

What is the point in this situation to talk about NATO as a partner in the fight against the drug threat?

NATO base: was the game worth the candle?

The sharply increased flow of drugs into Kyrgyzstan is the price our country has to pay for supporting the "anti-terrorist operation" in Afghanistan.

When they decided to close the military base, the Americans somehow lost interest in our agency and stopped funding.

Taking into account the special danger of drug trafficking for the Russian Federation, today, within the framework of cooperation through the CSTO and bilateral agreements, joint work is being carried out, which gives good results and prospects. An unheard-of case, but for the first time for specific prosecution of especially dangerous drug dealers, an employee of the State Drug Control Service of the Kyrgyz Republic was awarded an order by a decree of the President of the Russian Federation.

Regular readers of my blog know that I live in a beautiful mountainous country. In a country whose nature never ceases to amaze from year to year. Kyrgyzstan is a former Soviet republic in the heart of Asia. Few people know about this amazing land, but those who have been here fall in love with high mountains, stormy rivers and crystal clear lakes forever. Perhaps that is why recently our small country has been more and more often included in all kinds of ratings and recommendations of world travel publications.

This is not the first time I tell you about the beauties of Kyrgyzstan. Surely, many of you read with interest the notes about the trip to, about summer snow hunting in, about the trip to the most beautiful alpine. This is only a small part of the reports from trips around my homeland, which you will find in the section. Today I want to tell you about one of the most wonderful phenomena that pleases the eyes of tourists, travelers and locals at the end of spring - poppy fields.

Poppies usually bloom throughout May on all sides of Bishkek. This action begins in the fields, and then smoothly moves to the foothills in the vicinity of the capital. Hundreds of people travel out of town to look at the bright red poppy fields that stretch for hundreds of meters. Thousands of photos against the background of flowers fill the profiles of social networks. As you already understood, I also could not get around this action.

Having plunged headlong into work, I haven’t been out anywhere for a couple of weeks, and now it’s time to unwind a little and relax. On Sunday morning, I got into the car and set off towards the Ala-Archa Natural Park. Poppy fields were not the purpose of my trip, but what I saw in the mountains could not be ignored.

As soon as I left the city, it immediately became clear that all the foothills were strewn with poppies. It was possible to safely call on any hill and admire the flowering of this amazing plant.

Well, when I arrived, I was speechless. I haven't seen such beauty in a long time. You can safely shoot another series of wildlife for the Discovery channel.

I sat there for over an hour and didn't want to leave at all. How wonderful this world is. And how great it is that I live in a place where, half an hour from the capital, you can enjoy such breathtaking views - views of your native Kyrgyzstan.

home » Phuket » Poppy field kyrgyzstan. Scarlet poppies of Issyk-Kul, or secret springs of heroin expansion. NATO base: was the game worth the candle