NATO and Russia have passed a milestone in 2012 with the training of over 2,500 anti-narcotics officers from Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Silk Road Newsline.
Rasmussen hailed the counter-narcotics efforts being made by the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) in Central Asia. “In the last one year, we have achieved a lot. We have passed a milestone with the training of over 2,500 counter-narcotics officers from Afghanistan, Central Asia and Pakistan,” said Rasmussen, who is also the chairman of NRC.
The internalisation of criminal groups, new trends in drug trafficking, methods of concealment and the new technologies being used by criminals require cohesive efforts by law enforcement agencies in countries where these drugs originate and where they are marketed. “Professional law enforcement personnel must be equipped with skills and expertise in different areas of drug enforcement in order to combat this,” said the NATO chief. Currently, more than 100 training courses are being conducted with a total of 2,500 officers receiving the training. The training is taking place at four training sites in Russia, Turkey and the United States as well as in mobile training workshops throughout the Central Asian region.
According to NATO, the NRC Counter-Narcotics Training Project is a joint endeavor of several countries which are part of the NRC. These countries include Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. Non-NRC nations Finland and Ukraine and the beneficiaries Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan also took part in the project.