Central Asia’s poorest county is also one of the world’s leading transit routes for heroin, opium and other drugs from Afghanistan.
The Republic of Tajikistan is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. It borders Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east. It is home mainly to the Tajiks, who share culture and history with the Iranians, and speak Tajik, a language closely related to Persian.
This mountainous nation is being inflicted by a dramatic spike in the trafficking of drugs coming out of neighboring Afghanistan bound for Russia and Europe ? and increasingly being used by Tajiks.
Officially, according to the Tajik Drug Control Agency, 7 to 8 tons of illegal drugs were seized last year, and the U.N. ranked Tajikistan fifth worldwide in heroin and morphine seizures and fourth for opium.