Drugs in Central Asia

McClatchy reports on drugs in Afghanistan and Tajikistan in an article that highlights an important point about US policy towards drugs: combating the drugs trade is often superseded by other foreign policy objectives. In short, the US isn't doing much to fight the drugs trade because some of its important allies benefit from it, therefore it's better to do nothing about drugs and keep the allies.
Excerpt explaining that the West is not pressuring Tajikistan's president to fight drugs because he's an ally, even if many believe he controls the drugs trade:

Despite the public nature of the drug trade and related corruption in Tajikistan, however, the West has done relatively little to pressure President Rahmon.

Some Western officials acknowledge that it's the result of a political tradeoff: No one wants to risk alienating Rahmon on the issue of drug corruption because his authoritarian regime's cooperation is important for preventing Islamic militants from using the Tajik-Afghan border as a sanctuary.

"The Americans want to have a logistics base here, so do you think they're going to pressure the government about corruption?" said William Lawrence, a chief adviser for a U.N. Afghan border-management program based in Dushanbe. "The answer is no."

The U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe declined to comment, but a State Department official said that such balancing acts were common.

"There is always going to be a tradeoff based on different foreign-policy objectives, different security objectives, the tolerance for different types of corruption, different levels of corruption," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic protocol. "I don't think the situation in Tajikistan, frankly, is that much different than the rest of Central Asia in terms of these types of tradeoffs."

A second Western diplomat in Dushanbe was more blunt about Western governments ignoring reports on Tajikistan's official complicity in drug corruption.

"We send reports every month to our capitals, very negative, but they don't (care)," said the diplomat, whose country has troops in Afghanistan. "Because it's a so-called stable country leading to Afghanistan, we accept it."