Counternarcotics and Law Enforcement Country Program: Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world, roughly the size of Western Europe, and is geographically strategic, ethnically diverse, and resource rich. Kazakhstan is also a main transit country for Afghan-origin narcotics being smuggled to Western Europe. Kazakhstan’s law enforcement agencies continue to improve their overall professionalism and capacities to fight transnational threats such as narcotics, trafficking in persons, and organized crime. Kazakh agencies are also working on increasing their capacity to address the growing demand for drugs – through both prevention and drug treatment. Through its foreign assistance programs, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) continues to support U.S. foreign policy objectives of enhancing our relationship with Kazakhstan as partners in regional and strategic security, promoting the development of democratic institutions, and stopping the flow if drugs from Afghanistan.
- Counternarcotics: INL collaborates with its Government of Kazakhstan (GOKZ) counterparts in many ways, including political engagement, holding bilateral counternarcotics strategy sessions, and providing technical assistance. In cooperation with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), INL is implementing a project to establish seven checkpoints on major Kazakhstani traffic arteries to interdict drugs moving north toward Russia. The costs of the project are shared with the Government of Kazakhstan, which provides the land, buildings, infrastructure and officers to staff the posts. INL provides training, technical assistance and equipment.
- Border Security: INL has ongoing bilateral programs with the Border Guards and has provided grants to International Organization for Migration (IOM) to improve security along the southern borders with Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. These costs of these programs are also shared, with the Border Guards providing office space, infrastructure, and dedicated personnel as trainers.
Over the last year, we have seen an increasing willingness by the GOKZ to engage with the U.S. and its regional neighbors on border security issues. In 2006, the GOKZ devoted additional budget resources to the Border Guards. In May 2007, the Director of the Border Guard Academy visited the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Academy in Glynco, Georgia and the Border Patrol Academy in Artesia, New Mexico to establish academy-to-academy relationships that will serve as a basis for creating institutional change in the management of border security in Kazakhstan.
- Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Terrorism Financing (CTF): INL’s primary partners on AML/CTF issues have been the Office of the Procurator General (PGO) and the Financial Police, through the use of its Academy as a venue for teaching AML investigation skills to officers. INL has prepared a training program for financial crimes investigators and analysts. INL has conducted numerous AML training sessions at the Financial Police Academy using rooms that we had helped to rehabilitate and equip, with the most recent session occurring in February 2007.
- Trafficking in Persons (TIP): INL has created an Anti-TIP Center within the Legal Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MOI) Institute in Karaganda to train Migration Police and MOI Police to identify and combat trafficking. INL funded the rehabilitation and equipping of classrooms and offices, and provided furniture and equipment for two floors of a dormitory to support a center for in-service training of officers. The MOI provided office and classroom space and hired three people to staff the center, and revision of the curriculum is underway to provide cadets with professional instruction during their course of study. The Center can train approximately 30 officers per session; five sessions a year are planned.
FY05: $2.4 million
FY06: $2.1 million
FY07: $1.9 million
FY08: $1.01 million
Funding Source: FREEDOM Support Act (FSA)