KABUL: The Ministry of Interior on Sunday said 2,906 drug smugglers have been arrested in 2015, when 311 tonnes of drugs and alcoholic drinks were seized.
Brig. Gen. Baz Mohammad Ahmadi, counternarcotics department head at the MoI, told reporters here that unfortunately drugs remained the main source financing terrorism and fueling administrative corruption in the country.
Ahmadi claimed his department had many achievements last year in countering narcotics. In 2015, he said, the counternarcotics police conducted 398 large, 95 medium and 2,426 small operations countywide, arresting 2,906 smugglers and eradicating poppy crops on 10,244 hectares of land.
Calling the 2015 anti-drug operations as successful, the official said 10 top and blacklisted drug dealers, including Haji Watan, had been arrested in those operations. Watan was on the blacklist of the counternarcotics department.
The MoI official said Watan was arrested from Ghanikhel district of eastern Nangrahar province few days back and he performed his drug trade and smuggling from Achin district.
He said Haji Agha Mohammad, son of Haji Lal Jan Ishaqzai, a leading opium trafficker, was also among the notorious drug smugglers arrested last year and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
US President Barack Obama added Ishaqzai’s name to a list of foreign drug kingpins in June 2011. Then Ishaqzai was arrested by the counternarcotics police, but was released two months later.
Ishaqzai and his two nephews were sentenced to 20 years in jail for smuggling of 391 kilograms of morphine.
Some three million people are addicted to drugs in Afghanistan.
