Border guards seize 122 kg of heroin

Tajik border guards have seized 122 kg of heroin and arrested a drug courier as he tried to cross from Afghanistan, a spokesman said on Monday. "After warning shots were fired, one of the couriers probably swam away to the Afghan side. Another one, an Afghan citizen, was caught and handed over to officials," Abdusattor Gulahmatov, a border guard spokesman, said. The incident occurred near Moskovsky checkpoint on the Tajik-Afghan border, 250 km southwest of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. Afghanistan accounts for three-quarters of the world's supply of opiate drugs. Most are transited through sparsely populated Central Asia to Russia and then on to Europe. Porous borders, badly trained and lowly paid border guards, official corruption and high demand from local users all help to speed the flow of lucrative opium and heroin through Central Asia. The heroin, one of the biggest finds this year, could have fetched US $12 million in Moscow and up to three times more in western Europe. Tajikistan has the longest border with Afghanistan - 1,344 km. On Monday, a Tajik court sentenced a drug lord to twenty years in a high security prison, officials said. Saidkobir Sharipov was found guilty of controlling drug trafficking in the Farkhor and Shuroabad sections of the border with Afghanistan. He was arrested in July in a joint operation between Tajik and Afghan law enforcement officials. According to official data, 8.1 mt of drugs from Afghanistan were seized in Tajikistan last year, including 4.8 mt of heroin. But most estimates suggest that only 10 percent of Afghan-produced drugs are intercepted.