Evgeny Nikolaychuk on Vesti.FM: speaking about ethnic crimes, we should mention drug trafficking

Speaking about the ethnic crimes and whether crime has a nationality, one can not help talking about drug trafficking, the analyst of the news agency Vestnik Kavkaza, Evgeny Nikolaychuk, said during a live broadcast of the National Question program on Vesti.FM.

National Question is a weekly program of Vesti.FM, during which the hosts, Georgy Saralidze and Vladimir Averin, discuss various aspects of the national relations, primarily in Russia. Today's broadcast was entitled ‘Criminals and their nationality’. The hosts discussed whether it is necessary to mention the ethnicity of criminals and suspects in the official releases of the law enforcement agencies and media.

As Evgeny Nikolaychuk emphasized, there are entire regions in the world, where population lives below the poverty line and is forced to earn by production and smuggling of the narcotic potions. ”It is said to acknowledge, but Russia is one of the largest opiate users. The residents of our country consume heroin twice as much as China, and three and a half times more than North America,’’ he recalled the official statistics.

"In the world of the drug transit, the countries of the ‘golden triangle’ (Myanmar, Laos, Thailand) are the most dangerous in this respect, though they are far from us, but the countries of the ‘golden crescent’, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, specializing in heroin trade, and also China, where the production of synthetic drugs thrives, are much closer. Synthetic drugs have been actively gaining its niche in the world, and given that accustoming to opiates and synthetics usually occurs after one or two times, it becomes clear what kind of bomb the dubious neighbors are preparing for us,’’ the analyst pointed out.

In recent decades, Afghanistan has become the world's largest producer of raw opium and heroin. "This country is a drug farm, where after the overthrow of the Taliban, there has been a 40-fold increase in the opium poppy yields. Today, it alone produces twice as many opiates as the rest of the world produced 10 years ago. Afghanistan accounts for three quarters of the world production of raw opium. Heroin to Russia comes from abroad and is imported from Afghanistan along two routes. One of them is the Balkan route, through Iran and Pakistan to Turkey, and from there to Russia and Europe, " Evgeni Nikolaychuk said, adding that the second way is more convenient, although not so short.

"This is the northern route, also called the Silk Road - through Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which exists due to the transparency of the borders between the CIS countries. According to the official data, annually, 70 tons of Afghan heroin are imported to Russia via the northern route from the above-mentioned CIS countries, which is 20% of the world market consumption. The lion's share of the drug traffic - 50 tons - comes from Kazakhstan, " he named the scale of the drug exports to Russia.

The ethnic groups play a key role here. "We can already talk about the drug mafia, because those, who involved in transit, are closely linked with the national, and even family and clan ties. The profit of the drug mafia is so great (the global drug traffic is estimated at $ 800 billion annually, which equates it to the oil market) that its members are not afraid of the sky-high prison terms, which are applied in the most countries for drug trafficking. In Russia, the maximum punishment for drug trafficking is life imprisonment, and in many CIS countries, in addition to criminal liability, there is also responsibility for the storage, carrying, transfer and even use of drugs, " the analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza noted.

Some quantity of drugs is left on the northern route, which leads to the involvement of the population of the Asian CIS countries in criminal activities. From Afghanistan, the potion enters the neighboring countries - Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the most transparent border is with Tajikistan, as this country lets up to 90 tons of Afghan heroin to Central Asia, poverty and high unemployment contribute to this. Tajik migrants send heroin to Russia, and although part of it, about 3 tons a year, is seized by the law enforcement agencies, tens times more of it enters the country. Heroin from Central Asia is imported even to the Caucasus - about 2 tons per year, " Yevgeny Nikolaichuk said.

Almost all organized criminal groups operating in the Central Asian region are connected to the illegal drug operations. "Naturally, the twenty-year uninterrupted operation of the northern route has affected the situation in the region. According to the number of the drug addicts for every 100 thousand people, Kazakhstan is leading - 311 people, in Kyrgyzstan this figure is 191 people, in Tajikistan - 108 people, in Uzbekistan - 75 people. Not surprisingly, the highest level of opiate consumption is in the areas along the drug trafficking routes. The growth of drug addiction in these countries has already led to an increase in the number of related crimes," he stressed.

"Drug trafficking has tangible negative social and political consequences. This is the development of corruption, and the formation of the shadow economy, and the criminalization of the inhabitants of these regions. The ‘dirty’ drug money criminalizes and undermines the economy of these countries, " the analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza concluded during a live broadcast of the National Question program on Vesti.FM.