Iran's armed forces said Tuesday they have deployed a battalion of troops near the eastern border with Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight the flow of narcotics into the country.
"These troops have been posted between 20 and 150 kilometers (12 and 95 miles) from the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan," said the armed forces commander-in-chief, General Mohammad Salimi, cited by the official IRNA news agency.
The mobile battalion, made up of four companies of troops, will make air and ground patrols and will be dispatched to the border itself as needed, he said, adding that the army will expand its air bases and build other new ones in the country's eastern regions.
Parliament has ordered a special delegation to investigate the situation in Khorassan province, along the border with Afghanistan, amid a sharp rise in drug-trafficking and related crimes.
Kidnappings by drug traffickers have become a regular occurrence in the eastern regions and members of the volunteer Islamic Basiji militia in some 30 villages near the border are soon to be armed.
In May parliament voted to seal off the border with Afghanistan and a special budget has been set aside for an electronic barrier along the frontier, some of which is already in place.
Iranian authorities regularly accuse the Sunni Muslim Taliban militia, who now control most of Afghanistan after ousting President Burhanuddin Rabbani in 1996, of being behind the region's drug trade -- TEHRAN (AFP)
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