Pubdate: Tue, 16 Oct 2001
Source: USA Today (US)
Copyright: 2001 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc
Contact:  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nfront.htm
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/466
Author: Vivienne Walt, USA TODAY
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

IRAN FEARS A FLOOD OF AFGHAN DRUGS

MADANEAGHA DARBAND, Iran -- This mountain village on the Afghan border, a 
cluster of adobe houses lining a rugged road, is a world away from the 
paved and well-lit streets of America and Western Europe. But those worlds 
could soon be much closer if the fears of Iranian officials prove true. 
They predict that the war on terrorism could unleash a flood of Afghan 
opium through transit areas such as this village and onward to the West. 
The Taliban militia, which controls most of Afghanistan, warned that it 
would unlock its opium stockpiles and send plenty of cheap narcotics to the 
West if the United States followed through with threats to bomb Taliban 
positions.

There are early signs this already is happening. After rising this year, 
opium prices in the region have plunged to about $100 a pound in the past 
month, Iranian officials say. That indicates that the drugs are flowing. 
Last year, Taliban officials issued a religious decree, or fatwa, banning 
opium growing on punishment of death, even though the hard-line militia 
earned $15 million-$30 million a year in taxes from the crop. Before the 
ban, Afghanistan grew about 90% of the world's opium poppies, from which 
heroin and morphine are distilled. In recent years, about 80% of Western 
Europe's heroin and about 5% of America's supply hailed from Afghanistan, 
according to United Nations statistics.

U.N. officials suspect that the Taliban imposed the ban partly to drive up 
opium prices, which had fallen to all-time lows.

The ban, combined with a drought, caused the harvest to fall 90% in a year. 
"Opium prices here rocketed twentyfold last year" to about $350 a pound, 
says Mohammad Fallah, head of Iran's drug-control program. Even so, opium 
smuggling continued, using stockpiled drugs. The opposition Northern 
Alliance, which controls a small part of Afghanistan, never banned opium 
growing. So about 80% of this year's production is in alliance-controlled 
territory, the U.N. Drug Control Program reports. "When there is a war, 
everyone tries to convert everything into cash," Fallah says. His program 
has spent about $2 million on seeds and fertilizer for Afghan opium farmers 
trying to switch to wheat and corn crops. But when there is turmoil in the 
country, he says, people are desperate for cash to pay for transportation 
out of dangerous areas or to refuge in neighboring countries.

Iran's war on drugs The main road near the mountains here is a key trade 
route linking Afghanistan's western city of Herat to Iran and its capital, 
Tehran. That makes it a natural smuggling path. Ali Reza Nazeryafteh, 
commander of mobile police in northeastern Iran, says an Afghan 
motorcyclist dropped 26 pounds of opium last Wednesday as authorities 
chased him. "We hear reports many smugglers are hovering in the mountains, 
waiting to cross with opium," Nazeryafteh says.

"Our information is that the Taliban are not keen to enforce the ban 
anymore," says Esmaeil Afshari, director of international relations for 
Iran's Drug Control Headquarters. "The Taliban are not capable anymore of 
enforcing it."

The United States has fought its war on Afghanistan for just 9 days. But 
here along this rough front, Iranian forces have waged pitched anti-drug 
battles for nearly 16 years. There are now 30,000 military and police 
personnel stationed along the border, where they attempt to arrest armed 
Afghan narcotics smugglers. Iran has even issued arms to locals along the 
border to bolster its defense against smuggling.

Smugglers have killed more than 3,000 Iranian authorities over the years, 
Iranian police officials say. Thousands of smugglers have been caught and 
hundreds hanged, the United Nations says.

In the prison in Mashhad, Iran's major eastern city about 60 miles from 
Madaneagha Darband on the road to Afghanistan, 802 Afghan opium smugglers 
are crammed into overcrowded cells. Along a dark corridor in one section, 
triple bunks are filled with men. Others squat on the floor. Several jailed 
Afghan smugglers interviewed last week describe an opium trade that has 
thrived through drought and desperation. "I needed money to leave because 
life was so bad at home," says Vase Ghanbari, 25, a student from Herat. 
Ghanbari was jailed 17 months ago for smuggling 1 pound of heroin across 
the border. Unable to make ends meet, he says, he tried smuggling opium 
because he wanted to leave Afghanistan. Ghanbari intended to go to Ukraine. 
He bought the drugs for $375 and hoped to make a mere $50 profit in Iran.

Mohammad Baluch, 22, worked the Herat-Mashhad road as a teenager. He was 
caught 3 years ago transporting 600 pounds of heroin and 350 pounds of 
morphine from Afghanistan. The haul eventually could have sold for millions 
of dollars in Western cities. Around the time he was arrested, Baluch says, 
Taliban leaders had ordered farmers to cut production "because the price 
was very low."

Baluch is serving a sentence of life plus 15 years. With his cells already 
overflowing, the prison's general manager, Husain Jafari, is bracing for 
hundreds more smugglers driven to trade opium during wartime hardships.

"This will definitely bring more smugglers," he says. "The chaos causes 
hunger and poverty, and there is no alternative but to smuggle drugs." That 
thought causes great unease among people in this mountain village east of 
the Afghan border. Villagers have been victims of kidnappings by smugglers.

  'I Was Sure I Would Die'

Antonio Mazzitelli, the U.N. drug-control representative to Iran, says 
kidnapping is a convenient source of food and support for smugglers, who 
often receive just a small cut of the profits made by bigger dealers. Reza 
Chekandi, 25, is haunted by his experiences last winter, when he was held 
for 92 days by opium smugglers looking for ransom money. For 3 months, he 
sat chained in a house in a snowy Afghan village just across the border. He 
was fed only bread and water. The ransom demand of about $6,200 was more 
than 5 years' pay for Chekandi, a coal miner. "They told me to pack 
potatoes, rice, everything they could keep to eat," he says, describing how 
armed Afghans had dragged him and five other young men off a bus in eastern 
Iran last December. The hostages were then marched about 25 miles over the 
mountains into Afghanistan, carrying sacks of food.

"My guard said: 'I will kill you in the end.' So I was sure I would die," 
Chekandi says. "I was terrified." He says he watched armed men package 
opium for export at the house where he was held.

Chekandi says he finally persuaded his guard to unchain him, then walked 
home over the mountains. Iranian officials say about 200 of their kidnapped 
citizens are still in Afghanistan.

As instability increases in Afghanistan, Iran is sure its neighbor will 
turn to its one reliable source of wealth: narcotic-producing poppies. 
"Opium is very vital to Afghanistan's economy," says Fallah, Iran's 
drug-control chief. "It is not a lot of money for rich countries. But for 
people who have nothing but bread and some water, the narcotics trade is 
absolutely vital."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jackl