Russia, US conduct joint Afghan drug raid - Telegraph
Russia, US conduct joint Afghan drug raid
Russia and the United States destroyed four drug laboratories in their first joint anti-drug operation in Afghanistan, Russia's top drug control official has revealed.
Viktor Ivanov said the unprecedented joint operation hit four laboratories near the border with Pakistan, caused up to $1 billion in damage to the wider drug trade
Mr Ivanov says they seized up to 200 million doses of heroin.
Leaders of the Cold War enemies believe cooperation in Afghanistan can expand as both countries concentrate on terrorism and drug exports.
So far it has mostly been limited to Russia providing its territory for U.S. military transit.
The raid destroyed three heroin labs and one morphine lab, which were located about three miles from the Pakistan border at an important drug trafficking crossroads, Ivanov said.
Russia frequently slams what it describes as slack anti-drug policies of US and
NATO forces in Afghanistan, leading to an increased flow of drugs into Russia via Central Asian countries.
Mr Ivanov travelled to Washington last week to discuss co-operation in fighting drug trafficking and accused the United States of failing to destroy heroin laboratories and crack down on poppy-growing land owners.
Russian drug control authorities have estimated that 30,000 Russians died in 2009 as a result of using heroin from Afghanistan, and a million have died over the last decade.
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Russia and Nato plan joint initiative in Afghanistan - Telegraph
Russia and Nato plan joint initiative in Afghanistan
Russian forces could return to Afghanistan for the first time since they were forced out by mujahideen fighters in 1989, under a joint initiative with Nato.
A Nato summit next month will be attended by Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, to discuss the plans. Nato officials said Russia had agreed to sell helicopters to Afghanistan and provide training.
Moscow will allow Nato forces to withdraw equipment from Afghanistan overland for the first time, in proposals expected to be agreed in Lisbon.
"The summit can mark a new start in the relationship between Nato and Russia," said Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary-general.
"We will hopefully agree on a broad range of areas in which we can develop practical co-operation on Afghanistan, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics."
He also said that British and US troops would remain on Afghanistan's front lines for years under an open-ended agreement to be signed at the summit. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has demanded that his forces take over the fight against the Taliban by 2014.
While his call has been embraced by Western leaders, including Prime Minister David Cameron who set a five-year deadline on the Army's combat role, Mr Rasmussen said troops would not be withdrawn immediately.
Under a blueprint drawn up by Gen David Petraeus, Nato commander in Afghanistan, foreign troops would "thin out" but not leave disputed territory.
A connect between NATO and Russia and latter's coming into Afghanistan would mean that we can extend our non-combat stay in the region and further Iran's intervention would mean stretching Taliban paper thin. They should be stretched until they're torn to shreds and nothing remains of them. And it is bound to happen. 
