Speech by Federal Drug Control Service (Russia) Director V.P. Ivanov at the Plenary Meeting of the 55th Session of the UN CND, March 12, 2012

http://fskn.gov.ru/includes/periodics/eventsmain/2012/0312/091917764/detail.shtml On Mechanisms of Integrated and Well-Balanced Antidrug Policy Based on Infrastructural Development in Tackling the Problem of Liquidation of the Global Center of Afghan Drug Production

Mr. Chairman, Dear ladies and gentlemen, This 55th Session of such a reputable organization as the UN CND is taking place during the year of the hundredth anniversary of an outstanding event of the previous century – the signing of a multilateral convention on drug control: the International Opium Convention in 1912 in The Hague by 89 countries. Commemoration of this outstanding event and the forthcoming jubilee celebrations vest us with special responsibility and a need to stand up to the solutions of our predecessors. Such a key solution of already our Millennium could be demonstration of the victory of the international community over the Afghan global center of drug production. It seems that the current popular opinion of experts on the situation in Afghan drug production as something ordinary and not beyond other similar phenomena is not just groundlessly placid, but is actually a fatal mistake. Moreover, the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan scheduled by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and transfer of overall responsibility for security maintenance to the Afghan Government in 2014 is generating a totally new – extraordinary – situation. For ten and a half years since the Enduring Freedom Operation commenced, about 1 million people have died of Afghan heroin and 1 trillion dollars have been invested into organized transnational crime due to large-scale Afghan drug production. Consequently, a humanitarian drug catastrophe has struck not only Eurasia but Afghanistan itself. Thus, according to Afghan non-governmental organization “The New Line”, up to 7 percent of Afghan people are drug addicts today. And according to a study by a group of experts in toxicology headed by prominent Professor of the University of Florida Dr. Bruce Goldberger, the contemporary generation of Afghan children is doomed, since all of them are typical opium and heroin addicts. The scientists registered unprecedentedly high levels of drugs in children’s blood. Dangerous concentrations of drugs are contained not only in the smoke of adult opium smokers, but also in clothing, hair, beddings, carpets, furniture, children’s toys as well as in breast milk of nursing mothers. It is revealed that if such children do not get a drug, they begin to suffer from the abstinent syndrome. Thus, a 10-year-old girl’s hair sample contained 5607 pg/mg of a heroin metabolite, 8350 pg/mg of morphine and 4654 pg/mg of codeine, which correlate with parameters of a medically diagnosed adult drug addict. No comments are needed here. And at the same time, according to official statements, including those of the US Congress, financial aid to Afghanistan will be substantially reduced starting from 2014. In a situation where foreign aid accounts for the greater part of the Afghan national budget (approximately $8 billion of $12 billion), such solutions without building a new economy in Afghanistan will be another explosive stimulus for aggravation of the already catastrophic situation in the drug production level. All negative consequences of armed hostilities in Afghanistan, which is ruined by 10 years of war, will come upon Afghans. Will abandonment of one of the weakest states in the world face to face with the global drug mafia really become the gist of the Afghanization policy? Or are we all prepared for another drug tsunami? Dear colleagues, An extraordinary situation requires extraordinary measures and full implementation of responsibility of the world community in conformity with the UN Charter, law and spirit. In my speech I’d like to present, proceeding from the Five-year Plan of Liquidation of Afghan Drug Production offered to you at the previous 54th Session, new arguments and proposals on instruments and mechanisms to resolve today’s key problem of liquidation of the global drug production center as a consolidated activity of the world community under the aegis of the United Nations. The UN has for the past decades developed a sufficient number of regulatory norms and standards to settle the problem. Primarily it means: Firstly – an integrated and well-balanced approach to antidrug policy. Secondly – the fundamental UH right – the right for development fixed in the Declaration on the Right for Development, which was adopted by Resolution # 41/128 of the General Assembly on December 4, 1986. Thirdly – a system of measures to promote social progress and development based on the Declaration of Social Progress and Development proclaimed by Resolution # 2542 (XXIV) of the General Assembly on December 11, 1969. And finally – it is the already classical method of alternative development, which is the essential component of drug combating within the UN system. However, unfortunately, alternative development is still, as a thorough report by Professor Hamid Ghodse, Chairman of the International Drug Control Committee, shows specifically, a stepchild of drug policy and, moreover, is reduced to a particular procedure of crops replacement. A standard example is distribution of wheat sacks by American and NATO soldiers in exchange for a promise to stop growing opium poppy. However, in most cases, as we know, Afghan peasants (dekhans) gladly accept wheat and keep on cultivating super-profitable opium poppy. Therefore the alternative development status looks today like commonplace profanation. In this respect we welcome efforts aimed at drastic revision of the contents and standards of alternative development, which began last autumn from a workshop in Thailand and which high-ranking representatives will consider at the International Conference on Alternative Development in November 2012 in Lima. We are convinced that the conference will be decisive. It is full-scale alternative development that Afghanistan needs today most of all. What should it mean in practice? Organization of industrialization and electrification of long-suffering Afghanistan, where new technologies and infrastructures will be the primary source and locomotive of public wealth. I am convinced that resolution of the drug production problem consists of arrangement of a socio-economic rise by setting up infrastructures of new generations, which are technologically capable of providing access of the basic part of populations to the present-day global quality of life. A material response to the global challenge of drug production consists of setting up of new-generation infrastructures of general – not limited – access. In fact, the world is now facing the need to go away from a sick neoliberal economy that is generating inequality and narcotization of the Earth to a new socio-economic model of development enabling to implement the UN right for development and social progress. The point of view I’ve just expressed coincides with the position of Prime Minister and already elected President of Russia Vladimir Putin.   I’d also like to point out in brief that the current situation in Afghanistan is an absolute consequence of global economy, which is in desperate need of any money, including black drug money, to cover huge shortages of liquidity. You can see on the slide that cultivation of drug economy is an indispensable condition of the very existence of today’s global economy. It means that developing Afghanistan we work for the benefit of the whole world. In view of the above I propose the following mechanisms to settle the problem of Afghan drug production, specifying the Russian plan “Rainbow-2”. Firstly. To set up an international operations center of assistance to Afghanistan in order to organize industrialization and liquidation of drug production. Secondly. An intergovernmental operator is needed for activities of the center. As I have already proposed, it is necessary to set up an international target commission or agency, a kind of Afghan Development Corporation. Thirdly. Elaboration of Afghanistan development projects. In particular, launch of pipeline transit projects needs acceleration. Intensification of pipeline geo-economy will provide a great stimulus to integrate the region and oust drug production from the economic life of Afghanistan. Russia is ready to participate in the project of construction of the Turkmenistan – Afghanistan – Pakistan – India (TAPI) pipeline; Russia also supports IPI (Iran – Pakistan – India), since it will allow to improve the economy in the provinces inhabited by the Baluchi. I’d like to emphasize that Russia has recently developed good relationships with regional states: thus, we have seriously advanced in antidrug cooperation with Pakistan and Iran, and an antidrug quartet has been set up with Pakistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Fourthly. To set up a special target team to analyse global impact of drug production on international economy. Fifthly. To prepare an interactive map of liquidation of Afghan drug production; the map will show Afghan poppy fields, locations of drug laboratories and other drug infrastructure and logistics. Thus, over 500 drug laboratories are concentrated only in northern Afghanistan; they are working as a whole production cluster aimed solely at Russia. All more or less informed inhabitants of our planet will be able to add information to the map. An interactive map will deal with not only crops and drug laboratories, but also with the progress of implementation of industrialization and electrification. Thank you for your attention.