Yale University Press NEW HAVEN & 9 780300"089028 - Sito Mistero

120 ~ TALIBANestimated that 96 per cent of Afghan heroin came from areas under Talibancontrol.The Taliban had done more than just expand the area available foropium production. Their conquests had also expanded trade and transportroutes significantly. Several times a month heavily armed convoys inToyota landcruisers left Helmand province, where 50 per cent of Afghanopium is grown, for a long, dusty journey. Some convoys travelled southacross the deserts of Baluchistan to ports on Pakistan's Makran coast,others entered western Iran, skirted Tehran and travelled on to easternTurkey. Other convoys went north-west to Herat and Turkmenistan. By1997 dealers began flying out opium on cargo planes from Kandahar andJalalabad to Gulf ports such as Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.Central Asia was the hardest hit by the explosion in Afghan heroin.The Russian mafia, with ties to Afghanistan established during the Sovietoccupation, used their networks to move heroin through Central Asia,Russia, the Baltics and into Europe. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan developedimportant opium routes and became significant opiate producers themselves.Whereas previously Afghan opium would be refined in laboratoriesin Pakistan, a crackdown in Pakistan and the new diversification in routesencouraged dealers to set up their own laboratories inside Afghanistan.Acetic anhydride, a chemical necessary to convert opium into heroin wassmuggled into Afghanistan via Central Asia.The explosion in heroin production began ironically not in Afghanistanbut in Pakistan. Pakistan had become a major opium producer duringthe 1980s producing around 800 metric tonnes a year or 70 per cent ofthe world's supply of heroin until 1989. An immense narcotics trade haddeveloped under the legitimizing umbrella of the CIA-ISI covert supplyline to the Afghan Mujaheddin. 'During the 1980s corruption, covertoperations and narcotics became intertwined in a manner which makesit difficult to separate Pakistan's narcotics traffic from more complex questionsof regional security and insurgent warfare,' said a landmark 1992study on the failure of US narcotics policy. 4 As in Vietnam where theCIA chose to ignore the trade in drugs by anti-communist guerrillaswhom the CIA was financing, so in Afghanistan the US chose to ignorethe growing collusion between the Mujaheddin, Pakistani drugs traffickersand elements in the military.Instances of this collusion that did come to light in the 1980s wereonly the tip of the iceberg. In 1983 the ISI Chief, General Akhtar AbdurRehman had to remove the entire ISI staff in Quetta, because of theirinvolvement with the drugs trade and sale of CIA supplied weapons thatwere meant for the Mujaheddin. 5 In 1986, Major Zahooruddin Afridi wascaught while driving to Karachi from Peshawar with 220 kilograms ofhigh-grade heroin - the largest drugs interception in Pakistan's history.HIGH ON HEROIN: DRUGS AND THE TALIBAN ECONOMY — 121Two months later an airforce officer Flight Lieutenant Khalilur Rehmanwas caught on the same route with another 220 kilograms of heroin. Hecalmly confessed that it was his fifth mission. The US street value of justthese two caches was US$600 million dollars, equivalent to the totalamount of US aid to Pakistan that year. Both officers were held in Karachiuntil they mysteriously escaped from jail. 'The Afridi-Rehman cases pointedto a heroin syndicate within the army and the ISI linked to Afghanistan,'wrote Lawrence Lifschultz. 6The US Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA) had 17 full-timeofficers in Pakistan during the 1980s, who identified 40 major heroin syndicates,including some headed by top government officials. Not a singlesyndicate was broken up during that decade. There was clearly a conflictof interest between the CIA which wanted no embarrassing disclosuresabout drug links between the 'heroic' Mujaheddin and Pakistani officialsand traffickers and the DEA. Several DEA officials asked to be relocatedand at least one resigned, because the CIA refused to allow them to carryout their duties.During the jihad both the Mujaheddin and officers in the communistarmy in Kabul seized the opportunity. The logistics of their operationswere remarkably simple. The donkey, camel and truck convoys whichcarried weapons into Afghanistan were coming back empty. Now theycarried out raw opium. The CIA-ISI bribes that were paid off to thePashtun chiefs to allow weapons convoys through their tribal areas, sooninvolved the same tribal chiefs allowing heroin runs along the same routesback to Pakistan. The National Logistics Cell, an army-run trucking companywhich transported CIA weapons from Karachi port to Peshawar andQuetta, was frequently used by well-connected dealers to transport heroinback to Karachi for export. The heroin pipeline in the 1980s could nothave operated without the knowledge, if not connivance, of officials atthe highest level of the army, the government and the CIA. Everyonechose to ignore it for the larger task was to defeat the Soviet Union.Drugs control was on nobody's agenda.It was not until 1992, when General Asif Nawaz became Pakistan'sarmy chief, that the military began a concerted effort to root out thenarcotics mafia that had developed in the Pakistani armed forces. Nevertheless,heroin money had now penetrated Pakistan's economy, politicsand society. Western anti-narcotics agencies in Islamabad kept track ofdrugs lords, who became Members of the National Assembly during thefirst governments of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (1988-90) and NawazSharif (1990-93). Drugs lords funded candidates to high office in bothBhutto's Pakistan People's Party and Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League.Industry and trade became increasingly financed by laundered drugsmoney and the black economy, which accounted for between 30 and 50