November 17, 2003	Monday	Ramazan 21, 1424

KABUL: There are warning signs that Afghanistan’s drugs trade is becoming more sophisticated despite efforts by the government and international community to prevent the country turning into a “narco-mafia” state.

A senior UN drugs official in Kabul reported rising volumes of pure, high-quality heroin leaving Afghanistan and evidence of more centralized collection networks in some areas.

And a top Afghan drug buster said the business had tentacles reaching not only militants like the Taliban and Al Qaeda but local warlords and regional officials who were part of the government, making it hard to unravel.

Afghanistan has a long way to go before its drug business sees the same levels of sophistication as cartels in Colombia, with most profits earned and money laundered outside the country by non-Afghan networks. But worrying trends have emerged.

“Here there is no real need for a sophisticated drug network. All you need is a (Toyota) Corolla or a donkey to deliver the goods to the border to anyone who wants it,” said Adam Bouloukos, deputy head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Kabul.

That has not prevented buyers in the northern province of Badakshan from ordering opium growers to go to certain purchasers who are part of a network rather than to bazaars.

“This seems to be new and more organized,” he said.

“The fact that the quality of the heroin is improving would (also) point to greater sophistication. It is easy to do things here, so why risk making heroin in a laboratory in Moscow?”

Mirwais Yasini, director of the Afghan Counter-Narcotics Directorate, said warnings by ministers that Afghanistan could become a “narco-mafia” state were not exaggerated.

“I wouldn’t say for the time being that Afghanistan is a narco-mafia state, but without proper control over this issue then that would be the result,” he said in an interview.

FRAGMENTED BUSINESS: For the moment most Afghan opium, and derivatives morphine and heroin, is produced in small quantities by farmers and criminals and passed to traffickers who sell it to dealers in neighbouring countries.

Established networks with links to drug cartels based in Russia, Iran, Turkey and Spain then collect the goods and get them to markets in Europe and beyond by road, rail and sea.

While there are no exact figures, Yasini said there was “a lot” of opium processing in Afghanistan, with crude laboratories in Badakshan, Nangarhar in the east and Helmand in the south.

This month Pakistan authorities seized a ton of heroin near the southern Afghan border after a heavy exchange of gunfire.

Moving drugs across Balochistan to the port of Gawadar is a favourite route of cartels, but by no means the only one.

Opium and derivatives move in all four directions, including north through Central Asia and Russia and west through Iran. This year Afghanistan produced 3,600 tons of opium, dominating global supply after a rise of six per cent from 2002.

HARD TO ROOT OUT: There is circumstantial evidence that militants along the Afghan-Pakistan border fund their insurgency against foreign troops and the government partly by smuggling illicit drugs.

“We have had people interrogated who have been trafficking and who say that they are supporting the Taliban,” Yasini said.

The fact the rebels control remote and rugged cross-border trails in the east of the country suggests they are ideally placed to profit from the trade.

But Western diplomats say that by stressing the link between drug trafficking and “terrorism”, officials are ignoring an even bigger problem — that after 23 years of war, occupation and chaos people now in government have a hand in the business.

Yasini said that at least two provincial governors had been removed, in part because of suspected links to the drugs trade.

“(President) Hamid Karzai is determined to get rid of those people,” he said.

Complicating the counter-narcotics drive is the fact that the business flourishes because of Afghanistan’s main problems; the lack of security, lack of infrastructure and poverty. Farmers earn far more cultivating poppies than wheat.

“We cannot separate narcotics from other issues,” said Yasini. “If we had stability there would be no terrorism and no narcotics. If there is no stability we cannot expect anything.”

He outlined a plan for major crop eradication next year. Bouloukos said that, until there was better security across a country partly controlled by warlords and guerrillas, progress would be limited.

“The only way this place can become stable is a very serious military presence,” he said.—Reuters