Do All Drug Routes Lead to Violence?: Trafficking in Central Asia

Video recording here

Join us for a conversation on the relationship between state structures and organised crime in developing states on 16 September at 10:00 EDT, co-hosted by SOC-ACE, a research programme funded by UK AID.

In this event, researchers Dr. Erica Marat and Dr. Gulzat Botoeva will be joined by Alexei Trochev and Gavin Slade to examine the links between illegal drug trafficking, violence, and corruption in Central Asia.

The Central Asian region is a major route for the trafficking of drugs from Afghanistan to Russia and Europe. Of the nearly 300 tonnes of heroin produced in Afghanistan (UNODC, 2021), up to 90 tonnes of heroin pass through the countries of Central Asia annually. The region is also increasingly becoming both a transit zone and producer of synthetic drugs.

The researchers argue that drug trafficking is highly organised with major criminal and state actors participating, and with rarely visible but periodic changes occurring among the involved parties. Their analysis of violence and policing dynamics in the region shows how patterns of organised crime depend on state effectiveness, the state protection of trafficking, and the presence of competition between traffickers. Illicit drugs flow through the region with the help of the security sectors and political elites, who share a long history of protecting and participating in drug trafficking. Criminal violence is spread across the region, especially in urban areas, but the Central Asian states are capable of intercepting and preventing illicit activities.

This research comes at a time of an anticipated increase in drug trafficking from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and of growing economic uncertainty in the wider region due to the implications of the war in Ukraine. In the policy realm, their research findings can help develop the anti-trafficking strategy in the Central Asian region, including through better understanding of how drug trafficking can be curbed more effectively by identifying the main actors involved in this highly organised criminal process. In the academic realm, other scholars will be able to use these findings to explain state decline, corruption patterns, and the rise of intrastate violence in the region.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A .