Shortly after taking control of protecting the Afghan border, Tajik border guards proved their mettle by intercepting more than 120 kilos of heroin. The border guards fired upon the drug traffickers, but were only able to capture one.

While there are almost certainly forces at work here not reported by the media, this development in essence allows Tajikistan to throw these statements made on November 25 right back in Russia’s face:

“We feel that the drug flow has significantly increased. Big hauls of high-quality heroin have been intercepted in Russia recently,” Russian Federal Drug Control Service director Viktor Cherkesov said, adding that the fight against drug trafficking was more successful when Russian border guards patrolled the Tajik-Afghan border. “It was a reliable border shield that helped us contain the flow of opium- group drugs from Afghanistan to Russia,” he said.

Not only are these statements at least somewhat repudiated by today’s interception, they also fly in the face of the reality of Russia’s custodianship of the border. For starters, Russian border forces in Tajikistan have frequently been implicated in the drug trade, and have been many times accused of corruption.

True, the Russians did increase drug seizures dramatically since 2000, but then, the poppy cultivation has increased even more dramatically in Afghanistan in the last several years, so this means little.

This is not to say that Tajikistan will necessarily do a better job than Russia, and is not equally corrupt, but maybe Russia should give them a chance and hold its tongue given its own less than stellar record on regulating the border.