Video-Iran helps UN plan to boost counter-narcotics efforts

The illegal drug trade kills millions. What it doesn’t destroy, takes prisoner through addiction. It’s a trade that many countries, most notably Iran, has waged a strong war against.

On Wednesday, the United Nation’s Office on Drugs & Crime (UNODC) held a high-level meeting to strengthen its Counter-narcotics Assistance to Afghanistan and neighboring countries.

Traffickers have tried relentlessly to penetrate Iran’s borders and the UNODC notes a sharp increase in opium production in Afghanistan in the last year.

Now this map give you an overview of the drug flow coming out of Afghanistan, of course Iran is smack-dab in the middle here. keep your eye on the blue arrows, those are the ones that show exactly where the drugs are flowing and notice that it’s all AROUND Iran, some of it still trickles through, but mainly, it’s because of the efforts of the government to construct a gigantic moat, barbed-wire fences and a wall that is pushing the flow in other directions.

Iran firmly believes Afghanistan’s national efforts to attack the trade that feeds European, and other country’s addicts, needs to have regional and international supplementary support as a next step. Wednesday’s meeting comes at a time however of financial crisis. The Deputy Minister of the Interior of Afghanistan Gen. Baz Mohammad Ahmadi while reiterating his government’s commitment does not see the global crisis factoring into the program.

Wednesday’s meeting emphasized the need to relegate the drug trade to a human problem and not one that suffers from politicization. Ambassador Soltanieh is calling on international countries to step up.

The boost in the coordinated effort among the 8 countries of Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan will coordinate their efforts on the way to the handover of power to the Afghan Government in 2014.