KR Washington Bureau | 05/03/2004 | Heroin boom in Afghanistan overwhelms border nations
Heroin producers in Afghanistan, some of the principal financiers of al-Qaida and other terrorists, have never before been so brazen or so wealthy.
With a bumper crop of opium poppies under cultivation, Afghan narco-barons have begun stamping their brand names on the 2.2-pound bags of heroin they smuggle out of Central Asia to buyers in Moscow, Amsterdam, London and New York.
Sacks of high-quality Afghan heroin seized last week in Tajikistan carried the trademarks “Super Power” and “555.” Some of the sacks, which were hidden inside foil-lined containers of instant cappuccino mix, even included the addresses of the labs in Afghanistan where the heroin had been refined.
A Western-led campaign against opium-growing and heroin laboratories has been a wholesale failure, and drug-control experts say the number of processing facilities in Afghanistan has exploded over the last year. The trade and huge sums of money involved threaten to undermine vulnerable bordering states such as Tajikistan.
“There’s absolutely no threat to the labs inside Afghanistan,” said Maj. Avaz Yuldashov of the Tajikistan Drug Control Agency. “Our intelligence shows there are 400 labs making heroin there, and 80 of them are situated right along our border. Some of them even work outside, in the open air.”
Some 200,000 acres of opium poppies have been planted in Afghanistan – opium serves as the raw material of heroin – and the country’s late-summer harvest will produce three-fourths of the world’s heroin. That will mean further billions for growers, smugglers, corrupt officials and Afghan warlords.
It’s also likely to mean a windfall of tithes to al-Qaida and its Islamist brethren said to be regrouping in the mountains of Central Asia.
“Drug trafficking from Afghanistan is the main source of support for international terrorism now,” Yuldashov said. “That’s quite clear.”