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FOI-R--<strong>3880</strong>--SE<br />
interstate distrust – fighting drugs trafficking per se alone would be a futile<br />
battle.<br />
CONCLUSION<br />
The year 2014 is here, and some serious changes in the regional status quo are<br />
expected with it. Bad governance in any of the states involved – first and<br />
foremost in Afghanistan – and poor regional and international cooperation are<br />
the conditions that favour drugs trafficking. The overall harm done by the drugs<br />
business in the world is clear and enormous, even if its relative harmfulness may<br />
differ in different regions and countries. The scale of the overall harm it causes<br />
among the Central Asian countries is not clearly outweighed by the profits made<br />
through it by those in the ‘state-crime nexus’, and the ability of the drugs<br />
business to bribe is a very potent advantage. The growing domestic damage done<br />
by drugs is still a fact of which only governments and limited parts of society are<br />
aware, with the general public not sufficiently alerted to it.<br />
In these circumstances, countering this illicit business has to be viewed within<br />
the complex of larger problems, both substantively and geographically. It cannot<br />
be fought effectively within the borders of a single state, and it cannot be fought<br />
effectively if all other issues of the states involved are viewed separately from it.<br />
As the situation stood in mid-2013, it was not encouraging in either regard. For<br />
the post-2014 regional security scenario to improve, the horizons of cooperation<br />
against drugs trafficking must expand beyond state borders and beyond the<br />
region, and they should become comprehensive and not narrowly focused on<br />
drugs only.<br />
REFERENCES<br />
Buzan, Barry, Waever, Ole, and de Wilde, Jaap (1998) Security: A New<br />
Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers).<br />
Central Asia Counternarcotics Initiative (CACI), US Department of State<br />
website, http://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/fs/184295.htm (last accessed 19 June<br />
2013).<br />
Goodhand, Jonathan (2012) ‘Contested transitions: international drawdown and<br />
the future state in Afghanistan’, NOREF report, http://tinyurl.com/m7yw9j6 (last<br />
accessed 19 June 2013).<br />
North, Douglass et al. (2007) ‘Limited access orders in the developing world’,<br />
Policy Research Working Paper no. 4359, World Bank,<br />
http://tinyurl.com/l85zyud (last accessed 19 June 2013).<br />
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