Terrorist groups Boko Haram, ISIL feed on drug trafficking - FSKN chief
MOSCOW. July 23 (Interfax) - International terrorist groups, among them the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), have grown due to drug trafficking, Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) Director Viktor Ivanov has said.
"Boko Haram, ISIL and some others are examples of such evolution," Ivanov said at the international conference Moscow-African Anti-drug Dialogue in Banjul, Gambia, on Thursday.
Global illicit drug trade stands annually at $500 billion, Ivanov said. This money lays "a financial and organizational foundation for a whole range of new influential subjects which unavoidably confront the state and transform sociopolitical conditions according to their patterns," Ivanov said.
"These subjects supported by the colossal financial resources of drug trafficking involve in their activities and structure significant human resources and thereby acquire the features of quasi-state formations," the FSKN director said.
"These formations unavoidably contribute to the weakening and breakup of sovereign states and orchestrate terror attacks, piracy, [illicit] arms trade and human trafficking," he said.
Ivanov told reporters in Moscow on March 6 that ISIL was gaining up to $1 billion from Afghan heroin trafficking.
