Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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DUSHANBE, TAJIKISTAN — “I was at war every night for three years… In one day, we lost 10 people. I was there. I was wounded.”
Maj. Raziq Muradi, of the Afghan Border Police (ABP), rolls up his sleeve. Bullet wounds pockmark his forearm. “It was the Taliban.”
Muradi had been stationed in Herat Province when the Taliban attacked his post along the Afghanistan-Turkmenistan border. Four years ago, northern Afghanistan was considered a relatively peaceful area of the country. Now, the Taliban has a presence in all eight of the provinces bordering Central Asia. Many of the militants come from neighboring Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.
Muradi’s experience highlights the growing challenges facing border guards in Afghanistan. As the Taliban expands its territory to an extent not seen since 2001, the ABP, a branch of the Afghan National Army (ANA), is under renewed pressure to clamp down on cross-border drug trafficking and militant activity.
In Afghanistan, border security is inseparable from the larger war effort. The Taliban insurgency thrives off the country’s weak borders. As Imran Sadat, an international coordinator at the Afghan Customs Department (ACD) explains, “Taliban fighters enter Afghanistan, fight, and retreat across the border, where security forces cannot pursue them.”
Meanwhile, poor border security opens the door to drug trafficking, one of the Taliban’s main sources of funding. According to Sadat, “Smugglers use Afghanistan to produce opium, and then send it across the borders through Pakistan and Central Asia to Europe, to Russia.” In return for protecting, and in some cases physically aiding, poppy growers, the Taliban receives a 10 percent cut of sales. The poppy trade is estimated to generate $500 million per year in revenue for the Taliban.
What do Afghanistan’s border guards see as the main obstacles to securing the frontier? And what will it take to turn the tide? To answer these questions, I spoke to 13 members of the Afghan Border Police and five members of the Afghan Customs Department during the UNDP’s annual border management training course in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The group was diverse – geographically, ethnically, linguistically – yet time and again interviewees hit the same points: Afghanistan’s borders are under-resourced, beset by corruption, and defenseless in the face of foreign meddling.
The interviewees, many of them mid-level officers who have seen combat, had strong opinions about the path forward for Afghanistan. Taking these perspectives into account is critical as the Trump administration prepares to ramp up U.S. involvement in this now 16-year-old war.
The Battle for the Afghan Border
Border control. Imagine that.
Maj. Raziq Muradi, of the Afghan Border Police (ABP), rolls up his sleeve. Bullet wounds pockmark his forearm. “It was the Taliban.”
Muradi had been stationed in Herat Province when the Taliban attacked his post along the Afghanistan-Turkmenistan border. Four years ago, northern Afghanistan was considered a relatively peaceful area of the country. Now, the Taliban has a presence in all eight of the provinces bordering Central Asia. Many of the militants come from neighboring Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.
Muradi’s experience highlights the growing challenges facing border guards in Afghanistan. As the Taliban expands its territory to an extent not seen since 2001, the ABP, a branch of the Afghan National Army (ANA), is under renewed pressure to clamp down on cross-border drug trafficking and militant activity.
In Afghanistan, border security is inseparable from the larger war effort. The Taliban insurgency thrives off the country’s weak borders. As Imran Sadat, an international coordinator at the Afghan Customs Department (ACD) explains, “Taliban fighters enter Afghanistan, fight, and retreat across the border, where security forces cannot pursue them.”
Meanwhile, poor border security opens the door to drug trafficking, one of the Taliban’s main sources of funding. According to Sadat, “Smugglers use Afghanistan to produce opium, and then send it across the borders through Pakistan and Central Asia to Europe, to Russia.” In return for protecting, and in some cases physically aiding, poppy growers, the Taliban receives a 10 percent cut of sales. The poppy trade is estimated to generate $500 million per year in revenue for the Taliban.
What do Afghanistan’s border guards see as the main obstacles to securing the frontier? And what will it take to turn the tide? To answer these questions, I spoke to 13 members of the Afghan Border Police and five members of the Afghan Customs Department during the UNDP’s annual border management training course in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The group was diverse – geographically, ethnically, linguistically – yet time and again interviewees hit the same points: Afghanistan’s borders are under-resourced, beset by corruption, and defenseless in the face of foreign meddling.
The interviewees, many of them mid-level officers who have seen combat, had strong opinions about the path forward for Afghanistan. Taking these perspectives into account is critical as the Trump administration prepares to ramp up U.S. involvement in this now 16-year-old war.
The Battle for the Afghan Border
Border control. Imagine that.
