An operation group to be active in Tajikistan will include Russian advisers. Russia will go on training Tajik border guards in its military schools. Last but not least, the Frontier Service under Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, will establish a training center in Tajikistan for noncoms and junior experts, said Mr. Peshkov.
Russian border guards passed duties to their Tajik counterparts, November through December last, the Pamir frontier stretch, whose length exceeds 800 kilometers. Total cost of ceded realty and movables made ten million US dollars. More property, to twelve million, will come up as another 400 km stretch goes over to Tajik soldiers from Russia's Pyandzh and Moscow frontier units.
The world is alarmed-will Tajikistan manage to protect an extremely long frontier across which drug traffic is thriving?
Tajikistan's President Emomali Rakhmonov was determined to demand a Russian pullout from the frontier. He announced it in last year's state-of-the-nation address to parliament, April 30. While acknowledging Russian soldiers' merit, he said: "Russian frontier troops have been serving in this country for ten years in compliance with a treaty of 1993. They made a tremendous contribution to Tajikistan's security. However, as the treaty has it, in Clause 9, our entire state frontier is gradually to pass under our own troops' control."
The contemporary Tajik frontier lies along the rivers Pyandzh and Amu Darya. Russian military presence in their valleys is century-long. A landmark agreement of 1895 delineated the possessions of theRussian Empire, Afghanistan and British India. Twenty years before, Russia pledged to stop its southward advance.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, 1991, two of the newly independent post-Soviet countries-Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan-established own control of their frontiers. Unrest was rending Tajikistan at that time, soon to trigger off civil warfare. The critical situation demanded to prolong Russian military presence along the frontiers and elsewhere in that country.
Afghanistan produced 3.600 tons of opium last year alone, reports the United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention. Russian and Tajik border guards confiscated close on six tons of heroin and sizable batches of raw opium that year. The UN office highlights mounting drug traffic and an increase of trafficking heroin-the more expensive end product. Many experts do not think border guards are apprehending any more than 10 per cent of the entire amount of smuggled drugs.
