BBG Highlights
Drug Smugglers Recruiting Afghan Children, Tajik Service Reports
April 03, 2010
On March 30, the Tajik Service revealed that, due to the Tajik government’s intensifying efforts to combat the Afghan-Tajik drug trade, smugglers are increasingly turning to children to serve as their “mules.” The reason is simple: Tajik law does not allow for minors under the age of 14 to be prosecuted as adults. Unfortunately, there is a fertile pool of such recruits in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province, where poverty is severe and 30 percent of the children living along the Tajik border do not attend school.