As war against terror sidelines the United States government’s interest in the global fight against drugs, the US government-controlled Afghanistan is rapidly transforming into a heaven for drug producers and dealers. And in Pakistan, after years of lull, evidence is also growing to suggest renewed activities of the drug barons, according to an investigation by the FACT Intelligence Unit.

The United Nations’ drug control agency and the International Narcotics Control Board said that after a "zero" ton of opium production in the last year of Taliban rule in 2001, Afghanistan last year met about 76 per cent of the global demand of heroin and opium by harvesting poppy on 225,000 acres that yielded a record produce of opium of 3,500 metric tonnes.

The Foreign Assistance Act Section 490 of the US government authorises the President of the United States to reject "drug certification" for any country that allows poppy harvest on more than 1,000 acres. This enables the US government to stop all military and financial assistance to that country and to oppose all financial aid from multilateral institutions.

The US government had rejected "drug certification" for Afghanistan even in 2001 when the UN had confirmed total elimination of poppy cultivation, but the country escaped the US sanctions in the current year when it became the world’s largest producer of opium and heroin.

"This year the Afghan drug lords would have earned about $1.2 billion from the direct sale of opium while the international narcotics traffickers must have marketed $20 billion worth of heroin manufactured from Afghan opium in the international drug markets," according to an estimate by Pakistan’s Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF).
In the most vivid example of sharp decline in the US government’s interest in counter-narcotics efforts in the region, soon after launching its military operation in Afghanistan, it had withdrawn an allocation of $73 million to Pakistan’s Anti-Narcotics Force and had diverted the money to the Pakistan Army for use in war against terrorism, senior Pakistani officials confirmed.

Back in Washington, the US government documents showed, Bush administration has decided to reduce the State Department’s request for $75 million for counter-narcotics measures in Afghanistan to $40 million, a move that also surprised many in the State Department.

The US government’s indifference to the drug menace in Afghanistan is despite the fact that credible reports from top international narcotics experts estimated that in 2001, 15 per cent of the American heroin market came from Afghanistan, up from 6 per cent in 1999.

In London, British officials reckon that about 95 per cent of British heroin comes from Afghanistan. In a latest development, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have reported dramatic increase of heroin and opium trafficking from Afghanistan. These countries have hurriedly formed anti-narcotics forces and are pressing the United States to use its power and influence in Afghanistan to discourage drug production and trafficking.

Senior Pakistani officials said that several times last year, Pakistan brought up the subject during bilateral negotiations on Afghanistan with the top US authorities, but each time US officials, including the former CENTCOM chief General Tommy Franks, noted that the mandate given to the US military was to wipe out terrorism from the region, and not drugs.

The Times of London, in a recent article on drug situation in Afghanistan, quoted a US military official as saying: "We’re on an operational mission here against al-Qaeda and the Taliban." "A lot of that relies on the goodwill of local warlords and their men supplying us with intelligence and sometimes manpower," he added. "That goodwill is going to diminish if we suddenly start trashing their poppy crops and burning their opium warehouses."

President Hamid Karzai told a senior UN official in Kabul last week that his government’s programme of offering $5,000 to growers for the destruction of an acre of poppy harvest has been abandoned as it fuelled more poppy harvesting all over Afghanistan. In many cases, Afghan officials assigned to the cash-for-crop programme pocketed the money allocated for the programme.

While Afghanistan has rapidly emerged as the world’s largest producer of opium and heroin, Pakistan still boasts of almost the complete elimination of poppy cultivation and heroin factories even in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The Anti-Narcotics Force, established in 1995, achieved the enviable task through consistent efforts.
But ANF officials are now fearing that thousands of tonnes of heroin and cannabis, now being produced in Afghanistan, will also be sent to Europe and America through Pakistan, though it seems that most favoured routes for the drug-traffickers from Afghanistan now run through the Central Asian Republics and Russia.

In the last three months, 15,000 tonnes of cannabis and hundreds of kilogrammes of heroin was seized in various raids in Pakistan by the ANF, Customs, Sindh Excise department and the FC, according to the record maintained at the ANF headquarters.

Some of the most spectacular recent drug seizures were made by the Sindh government’s Excise department that had intercepted large consignments of drugs that had originated from Afghanistan and were transiting through Sindh for Europe and America.

More ominous than these seizures is the discovery that new drug cartels are being founded and the drug-traffickers are now targeting sensitive government agencies to transport drugs from Pakistan to Europe and America.

Separately, some of the key Pakistan drug barons, who had been languishing in prisons on various drug counts here or abroad for more than a decade, have either been released during the appeal process or have completed their prison terms. Each one of them is known to have strong ties either within the law enforcement community or with influential ruling politicians.

In Karachi, a duo of Pakistan’s most notorious drug-traffickers, both convicted here and in the United States on drug-trafficking charges, after having spent their prison terms in the US and in Karachi, are now negotiating a deal worth Rs 2000 million to bail out a Karachi business group from its banking liabilities. This pair of drug barons is known to have deep ties with the Afghan tribes, bordering Pakistani tribal areas in the NWFP.

In Balochistan, an influential political and tribal personality, who stayed in prison for more than a decade for his involvement in world’s biggest drug seizures in Balochistan in 1988, has been set free under the judicial process. His family is now part of the political coalition ruling Balochistan.

This tribal Baloch family is also known to have strong ties in the tribal areas of Afghanistan bordering Balochistan.

In Punjab, a known politician and the former member of parliament who had been arrested allegedly red-handed with a large consignment of drugs in 1995, was set free in Lahore after his capital punishment awarded by a narcotics court was quashed by the Lahore High Court. The ANF has now moved the Supreme Court for the reversal of the high court decision. The former politician’s family that has representation in parliament has now joined the ruling coalition.

Pakistani anti-drug officials are speaking about stream of intelligence that showed new drug cartels and networks are being formed across Pakistan. In a case that did not get much media attention last month, the ANF had discovered several cells within the Airport Security Force (ASF), which were being used by the international drug-traffickers to transport heroin from Pakistan to Europe, mainly to Britain.

The arrest by the ANF of Munir Rajput, the ASF’s company commander in Karachi along with an ASF guard while they were escorting a consignment of heroin for a flight to London last month, unveiled a massive penetration of drug-traffickers in the ASF. The case was forwarded to the ASF for further internal probe, but the results of this internal probe that centred on many ASF staff members are being kept secret by the ASF.

Such drug-related activity, where the drug-traffickers have penetrated the sensitive government agencies, and the drug barons were not forced to hide behind the veil of secrecy, was last witnessed in Pakistan in the eighties.
Forecasting the return of drug power to Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s highly regarded Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani feared recently that if the present trend persists "Afghanistan may return to narco-mafia". Even the most cautious Pakistani anti-drug officials are not completely ruling out such a scenario in the not very distant future.