By IANS/RIA Novosti,
Dushanbe: Tajik and Afghan drug police have shut down a large international drug trafficking channel, seizing 420 kg of narcotics and detaining 13 traffickers, the Tajik Drug Control Agency said.
The police operation continued for several months in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province in close collaboration between the Tajik agency and the Afghan interior ministry.
The ring has been trafficking drugs from Badakhshan to Central Asia and on to Russia and Europe.
One Afghan police officer was killed and five injured in the operation.
The brother of the drug ring’s leader was killed in the exchange.
The drug traffickers arrested in the operation have been involved in abductions and human trafficking. Two Tajik women were freed from captivity.
Afghanistan is the world’s leading producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, and is “one of the most important countries worldwide in terms of cannabis resin production,” according to the UN’s 2012 World Drug Report.