MOSCOW. Nov 30 (Interfax-AVN) - Western forces in Afghanistan fail to downsize drug trafficking in the country, which the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) considers a serious risk to its security, the organization's Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha told Interfax Wednesday.
"The situation even got worse, as the drug flows from Afghanistan tend to grow," he said.
The CSTO, which includes Armenia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, offers NATO help in combating Afghan drug traffic, Bordyuzha said.
According to him, the CSTO and NATO could find grounds to effectively cooperate on Afghan issues, including in combating drug trafficking and terrorism, and in crises management.
"There is a consolidated position of all organization's members that such cooperation is necessary," he said.
The Russian Federal Drug Control Service reports that drug smuggling from Afghanistan to Russia has grown this year after the Russian border guards withdrew from the Tajik-Afghan border.
"We feel this increase in the drug glows, and Russia has seized some large loads of high-quality Afghan heroin recently, which was not smuggled often through Russia before," drug control service director Viktor Cherkesov told Interfax.
According to him, drug trafficking was suppressed much more effectively when Russian border guards were keeping the Tajik-Afghan border closed.
"Russian border guards deployed at Tajikistan's border with Afghanistan helped a lot in preventing flows of opium drugs from reaching Russia," he said.
Cherkesov added that Russian law enforcement had to intensify efforts in the regions adjacent to Kazakhstan, a transition point for heroin from Afghanistan.
Apart from that, international cooperation is being developed in establishing so-called anti-drug security belts around Afghanistan.