Special Conference About Central Asia (GA4, 2011)
Drug trafficking in Central Asia
Afghanistan is the worldīs biggest opium producer, wich is the base material for heroin and other drugs. After the end of the Taliban regime, the drug cultivation became the most dominant economic sector in Afghanistan. Many people are involved in this business and exist on it, wich makes it very difficult to combat against and try to reduce and remove it. Besides that, the drug economy benefits by the political and social insecurity and destabilisation, weakens the state and disables a good governance. Itīs a big handicap for the reconstruction and delays the aims of development organizations and other projects. Furthermore warlords finance their troops and buy their weapons through the money, wich they gain through the drug trade and preserve in this way their supremacy in the provinces. This weakens the power ot the government in Kabul and slows down the process of democratisation. Aditionally drug abuse and addiction is a growing social and health related problem particular beneath women and refugees. Because of all theses points itīs necessary and important to do something against the drug trade and improve the situation in Afghanistan and the whole Central Asian region.
Illegal Weapon Trade in Central Asia
If there is a war, there is always someone profiting from it. For example arms dealers.
In the case of the war in Afghanistan, like in many others, these persons or organizations sell arms to rebels or terroristic groups as well as to militias fighting for the government. The money for the arms comes from sources as illegal as the arms traffic itself, for example drug production.
In Central Asia, this black economy is mainly in the hands of criminal organizations, which buy arms of every type from stocks and producers all over the world and sell them to insurgent groups like the Taliban which pay for the arms either with drugs produced under their control or with the money they made with them.
The (international) organizations dealing with arms have put up widespread logistical and financial networks which are very hard to uncover and destroy. They also support a flourishing corruption, including bribery that ranges from usual policemen at border control stations to high governmental officials. Often the influence of arms dealers in the states they are active in is enormous.
It is now the task of the Special Conference about Central Asia to identify the problems and connections regarding illegal arms trade in the region and to find solutions to these issues to make Central Asia a safer place.
Human Rights in Central Asia with focus on Women Rights
This topic mainly focusses on the human rights situation in the states in the north of Afghanistan like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. These countries, inhabited by many different ethnic and religious groups, are ruled by more or less despotic presidents and dictators, who suppress opposition and press and misuse the wealth of their land to enrich themselves and their families, corruption is widely spread and deeply rooted there.
For the western countries, namely the European Union and the USA the countries in this region are of high importance, not only because of their natural resources like oil and ore but also for military bases for the operations in Afghanistan. In addition to this, the Central Asian states are important transit countries for oil pipelines to Europe and Russia and supply lines from Europe to the western troops stationed in Afghanistan.
For this reasons, the western relations with the local dictators are often close, violations of the human rights in this area mostly have no consequences for the governments commiting them.
The situation of women in the Central Asian countries is often also critical: Since the breakdown of the Soviet regime in the early 1990s, gender stereotypes and the traditional role of women as housewives and mothers were re-introduced by the authorities in a wave of nationalism and religiousness. Although the womenīs situation is meanwhile improving, the female inhabitants of Central Asia are far from emancipation, ancient rituals like bridal kidnapping (men stealing women forcibly for marriage) are widely spread in rural areas.
Since human rights and democratic principles are lacking in many spheres of the Central Asian states, it is now the task of the United Nations and especially its Special Conference about Central Asia to create a resolution with suggestions how to improve the human rights situation in this region.
Last update: 07.07.2011