Moscow is concerned over the persisting threat of terrorism and drug trafficking from Afghanistan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during the Russia-NATO Council meeting on Thursday.
“Unfortunately despite all the international efforts, the threat of terrorism and drug trafficking from Afghanistan persists,” the minister said. Russia “is concerned how things are going to develop after the International Security Assistance Force is pulled out of Afghanistan.”
The withdrawal of the international contingent is scheduled for 2014.
Heroin production in Afghanistan rose 40-fold in the past decade, and opium poppy plantations covered 130,000 hectares in the Central Asian country, according to Russia’s federal drug control watchdog.
The U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs said the Taliban made $150 million from drug production annually and in all drug profits amounted to $4 billion.
