Opium gold unites US
friends and foes
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI
- Drug smugglers call it the golden route:
from Afghanistan into Pakistan and then into eastern Iran, it's the trail that
takes Afghanistan's abundant opium, and its derivative,
heroin, to Western markets.
And
all along the way there is strong political
compromise in
which officials turn a blind
eye to the players visibly plying the notorious
route, and at each stage the commissions get
bigger.
The route
provides a funding lifeline for the Taliban
resistance in Afghanistan, and also enriches
not only the United States-friendly Afghan
warlords but also elements of the Northern
Alliance, the US's key ally in the
country.
Afghanistan is estimated to
produce 87% of the world's supply of opium (4,519
tons this season, down 2% from 2004 ), with nearly
half of the country's US$4.5 billion economy
coming from opium cultivation and trafficking.
Under the latter years of the Taliban
before their ouster in the US-led invasion of late
2001, opium production continued apace, but in the
immediate post-invasion period warlords blocked
the smuggling routes.
The international
smugglers were thus forced to make new
deals
with
the warlords to allow for the safe transportation
of the narcotic. By the end of 2002, the drug
underworld further upgraded the deals under which
opium was smuggled into Pakistan, then back into
Afghanistan and on to Europe.
A
senior US Pentagon official who has been
involved in US-supported low-intensity war
operations and insurgencies since the Vietnam war and involved
in the reorganization of the Northern Alliance [1]
in Afghanistan to effectively pitch them against
the Taliban, admitted to Asia Times Online that the
drug economy in Afghanistan was more powerful than
the official one.
He said
that the only thing that linked pro-Taliban
and pro-Northern Alliance warlords was the black economy, from
which money trickled down to the anti-US resistance -
which has intensified lately, with 1,100 people killed in the past
six months.
The golden
arteries Information obtained from the US
Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington reveals
trafficking groups based in Pakistan smuggling
multi-ton shipments of drugs to Europe and the US.
These regional drug traffickers represent a diverse
ethnic and tribal cross-section. Couriers take
some of the drugs out of Pakistan through its
international airports and the port of Karachi; the
remainder goes overland along Pakistan's Arabian
Sea coast to Iran and on to Turkey, or up
into the Central Asian states.
The general
route for smuggling Afghan-produced opiates from
Pakistan goes overland from Pakistan's
Balochistan province across the border into Iran, then
passes through the northwestern region, which is
inhabited by Kurds, and finally into laboratories in
Turkey, where the opium is processed.
The shipments from Pakistan may be
broken down into smaller shipments once in Iran. Iran
is both a transit country and a destination
for opium products. Iranian domestic production
is believed to be quite low and unable to
supply domestic demand. Opiates not intended for
the Iranian market transit Iran to Turkey, where the
morphine base is processed into heroin. Heroin and
hashish are delivered to buyers located in Turkey,
who then ship the drugs to the international
market, primarily Europe.
Inside the
underworld Near the coastal belt of Makran
along the Arabian sea in Balochistan province lies
the small town Mand, from where Pakistan's federal
minister for special education, Zubaida Jalal,
hails. But for the local people, the
name in the region is Imam Deen. Imam
Deen's influence spreads north, west, east and south of
the coastal highway lanes from Gadani (near Karachi)
all the way along the coast.
Imam
Deen is number one on the wanted list
of Pakistan's Anti-Narcotics Force, which
registered cases against him in 2002 and 2003, which
were then referred to the Narcotics Suppression
Court in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan. But
he never appeared and the court declared him
an absconder. Nevertheless, he is often seen in the
corridors of power in Quetta, and with the
province's chief minister, shuttling between
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Asia Times Online investigations reveal that
Imam Deen lives without fear in Mand, which
is informally the heart of the "golden route". Drugs
not destined for the laboratories of Turkey end
up in the Mand area, where they are refined and sent
back to Afghanistan en route to Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan, where Afghan drug lords hand their consignments
over to the international underworld. These
are generally inferior quality drugs for the local
market. The better quality opium is smuggled to
European destinations. In the north of
Afghanistan, the drugs generally pass through the
hands of Uzbek warlord Sibghatullah in Mazar-i-
Sharif.
Drugs connect the Taliban and
Northern Alliance Top US officials admit
that despite sharp differences between the Pashtun
Taliban resistance and the Northern Alliance, some
groups within these factions are in touch with
each other. Although there are no traces of any
alliance that would provide strategic support to
the Taliban-backed resistance, the drug trade is
of mutual interest to both groups.
Iran,
to date, does not support either the resistance or
the Northern Alliance, but US officials have their
suspicions that the Iran end of the
Afghanistan-Pakistan drug route is purposely left
open, which in their opinion is a sign of indirect
support for the warlords in southwestern
Afghanistan who are hand-in-glove with the
Taliban. The largest areas of land under opium
cultivation in Afghanistan (256,880 acres
countrywide in 2005) is in the southern regions,
especially around Kandahar, the former Taliban
stronghold.
The Taliban resistance
generally only targets military convoys or
containers carrying oil and goods for US and other
foreign troops. By and large, other road transport
- especially vehicles carrying drugs - is safe as
local warlords receive money from the traffickers
to ensure safe passage. In turn, part of this is
passed on to the insurgents (through tribal
moderators) to keep them away.
Ironically,
the US supports most of the warlords in
Afghanistan. For instance, former Taliban
commander (of Nangahar province) Mullah Rocketi
(infamous for kidnapping Japanese engineers) was
arrested after the fall of the Taliban and changed
sides to the US. He is a candidate in next month's
parliamentary elections. Despite this, Rocketi,
the most powerful warlord in southern Afghanistan,
is still believed to have a soft spot for the
Taliban.
Similar warlordism exists in
eastern Afghanistan, where Hazrat Ali has a deal
with local commanders loyal to former Afghan
premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hazrat Ali is also a
candidate in the elections. He has assumed control
of most check points in the Kunar Valley, this
after a number of commanders loyal to Hekmatyar,
including Kashmir Khan, were arrested.
Jalalabad Highway Baraley is one of the
brothers of slain Haji Abdul Qadeer, whose other
brother, Haji Deen Mohammed, is the governor of
Nangahar. Baraley, however, is the de facto power
in the area and controls all posts and passes from
Jalalabad to Kabul.
The former governor of
Khost, Gardez, Paktia and Paktika, Badshah Khan Zadran, is
the only warlord in that region; he stays mostly in the
Pakistani town of Dand-i-Darpakhail in North
Waziristan. He has a deal with two powerful
Taliban commanders - Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani
and Saifullah Mansoor - whose men regularly
receive big payments from drug dealers allowing
them to operate in the area.
Through this network
of Pashtun warlords, lots of money leaks to
the Taliban, whose other sources of finance have been
choked as a result of the "war on terror".
Note [1] After the
capture of Kabul by the Taliban on September 26,
1996, the non-Pashtun forces allied into the
Northern Alliance. Its members are predominantly
of Tajik and Uzbek origin. The Northern Alliance
continued to fight against the Taliban until the
US-led invasion of late 2001.
Syed
Saleem Shahzad, Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia
Times Online. He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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