Pubdate: Mon, 03 Oct 2005
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2005, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Graeme Smith

IT'S OPIUM-PLANTING TIME AND BUSINESS IS BOOMING FOR AFGHANISTAN'S DEALERS

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- Abullah came out of the night like a ghost,
his long shirt flapping as he flitted out of a dark alleyway and
climbed into a waiting car.

The 28-year-old smuggler flashed a confident smile and shook
hands.

As the car jolted into the chaos of Kandahar's traffic, he seemed
perfectly at ease, looking like a wealthy Afghan businessman with his
suit vest, pressed white tunic and gold watch.

Over dinner, Abullah explained why he's not afraid to meet a foreign
reporter, despite the fact that he makes his living by transporting
illegal drugs. It's the same reason he doesn't fear the police, he
said, and the reason Afghanistan remains the world's largest supplier
of opium: corruption.

"Bribery is more and more common nowadays," he said, tearing into a
chicken kebab.

"Business is good."

Smugglers, poppy farmers, addicts and anti-narcotics officials say
precisely the same thing.

This week marks the start of early planting in Afghanistan, and the
government is scrambling to persuade farmers that they should grow
legitimate crops instead of opium poppies, which produce the main
ingredient in heroin.

The efforts are undermined, however, by police and government
officials who profit from what is Afghanistan's largest industry.

The United States and other donors, embarrassed by the idea that
Afghanistan could turn into a narco-state, have been pushing President
Hamid Karzai to remove governors and police chiefs who are complicit
in the trade. Observers say Mr. Karzai wants to help his U.S. backers,
but must tread cautiously because the government needs local strongmen
to maintain control over rural areas.

"What can the central government do, if it doesn't have the force
necessary to remove a governor?" said Thomas Pietschmann, an analyst
at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna.

The U.S. State Department expressed similar concerns last month,
suggesting that rising corruption would fuel growth in Afghanistan's
opium trade in 2006.

Two opium smugglers interviewed by The Globe and Mail said they
regularly pay bribes, usually 4 per cent of their gross incomes, to
district police chiefs in the areas where they operate. Researchers
say those percentages sometimes reach 10 to 20, depending on a
smuggler's connections.

Farmers must pay for protection, too: One opium grower near Kandahar
said the police usually demand a flat rate that is the equivalent of
$5,800 to $7,000 a year.

Some indications suggest that the rot goes much higher. One of
Afghanistan's senior ministers responsible for counter-narcotics,
Interior Minister Ahmad Ali Jalali, quit his job last week after
complaining that unspecified government officials were involved in the
opium industry. Counter-narcotics Minister Habibullah Qaderi has made
similar allegations in the past, saying unnamed provincial governors
and police chiefs are suspected of reaping drug profits.

However, nothing has happened to those suspected and many people in
the trade interpret this to mean that the government tacitly accepts
the status quo.

"If the government said 'Stop,' and they stopped taking bribes, they
could stop us," said a 36-year-old poppy farmer with a weathered face
and ugly scars on his hands.

Police officers usually visit his small farm in March when the poppies
are fully grown. If farmers cannot pay what the police demand, he
said, officers raze their fields.

If the bribes are paid, the farmers are allowed to harvest. They prick
the seed pods with metal tools so the milky sap oozes down the sides
of the green bulb. The sap turns dark and gummy when exposed to the
sun, and the farmers scrape off this paste and package it into plastic
bags. Farmers and smugglers say it sells for about $200 to $220 a kilogram.

Minor dealers collect the bags from the farmers, and sell them to
bigger smugglers, usually pocketing about $20 to $40 a kilogram.

The smugglers try to find the most direct route to the nearest border,
so they can reduce the number of local officials they need to bribe
along the way. Many send their product north into Central Asia, bound
for markets in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Others go south, to
Pakistan, where the drugs are eventually loaded as cargo at the docks
in Karachi.

The longest smuggling routes reach across Afghanistan to the border
with Iran, because dealers are willing to travel further to reach a
country where raw opium commands the best prices from traders, who
send the goods through Turkey to Europe.

It's a challenge that leaves the smugglers two options: travel over
the wilderness, or risk the roads. Abdul Rahman, 30, prefers the
off-road route. A native of Lashkarga district in Helmand province, an
area notorious for its Taliban sympathies and its opium growing, Mr.
Rahman says he organizes large convoys of Toyota Land Cruisers and
stays in the dangerous areas where police still fear the insurgents.

His convoys carry up to 450 kilograms of drugs each time, Mr. Rahman
says, and they're heavily armed to fend off bandits. Mr. Rahman says
his men sometimes tear straight across the desert, crossing most of
Afghanistan's breadth, without paying more than a few small bribes.
(Experts say it's unlikely that Mr. Rahman could operate among the
Taliban insurgents without also paying them a percentage.)

Other smugglers, such as Abullah, prefer a subtler means of
transportation on Afghanistan's slowly improving roads. He hires
specialists to fashion hiding spots in the bodies and engine
compartments of his cars and trucks. These vehicles blend in with the
regular traffic; in case of trouble, each carries three unarmed men
who have the equivalent of $1,000 in Pakistani rupees hidden on their
bodies.

Usually there aren't any problems, Abullah said, because he pays the
police chief in every district that maintains checkpoints along the
roads.

"At each checkpoint, there's a guy who is ours," he
said.

Getting caught with drugs in Afghanistan isn't a problem, Abullah
said, rubbing his thumb and fingers together in a gesture to indicate
how easily he buys his freedom.

But the Iranian dealers have a different level of fear, he said. They
pay him at a hiding place in the borderlands -- he makes up to $200
profit a kilogram -- then disappear across the desert on horses,
camels or in SUVs, knowing that they face death if caught.

Smuggling happens more overtly at the border town of Wesh, on
Afghanistan's southern frontier with Pakistan.

In the daytime, smugglers pay children such as Jamaludin, 12, to ferry
blankets, stereos and even people across the border. The children are
paid 40 or 50 cents per crossing, they say, and split their earnings
with the border guards.

"I take the money, and the guards know me, they know it's okay,"
Jamaludin said.

At night, locals say, the smuggled goods include a steady traffic in
drugs. Experts say the poorly policed territory just inside the
Pakistani border is home to many large drug laboratories, reputed to
be protected by well-equipped private armies.

At the Kandahar Drug Control and Co-ordination Unit, the Afghan
government office responsible for counter-narcotics, co-ordinator Gul
Mohammed Shakran says he's supposed to monitor prevention work in
three provinces but can't afford gasoline for his beat-up old Toyota
Corolla.

"Please help me," Mr. Shakran said, begging a reporter for spare
change. "Can you give us $20 for a camera? What about $10 for gas? We
need a whole new car, in fact, because this one doesn't go across
rough roads."

The Kandahar region has about 3,000 addicts hooked on opium or its
derivatives, Mr. Shakran said, and will likely have 4,000 by next
year. He gave a tour of the region's only treatment facility, which
has 10 beds, and stated the obvious: "The available services simply
aren't enough."

Most of the addicts at the treatment centre say they discovered drugs
after the overthrow of the strict Taliban regime, which was famous for
refusing bribes.

Qadir Jan, 40, was a butcher during the Taliban's rule. Over the past
three years, he slowly sold his tools to pay for heroin and opium, he
said, and was reduced to manual labour, which itself became difficult
as his addiction took hold. Now he sits listlessly on his thin
mattress while flies crawl across his face.

Another addict, Bakht Mohammad, 26, blames corruption for the misery.
He used to buy drugs from shops adjacent to police stations and
government offices, he said, and the officials knew exactly who their
neighbours were.

"The police are involved in this," Mr. Mohammad said. "They help the
traffickers, and the government doesn't do anything."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake