TURBAT, Jan 13: Traffickers moving drugs from Afghanistan to European markets through Balochistan are using “increasingly sophisticated” methods, according to anti-narcotics officials.

Commander Azhar Arif, whose officers made one of the world’s largest heroin busts last week, showed reporters on Saturday the formidable arsenal of weapons his anti-narcotics squad had seized.

It not only includes the ubiquitous Kalashnikovs and shotguns but also Austrian assault rifles, Czech machine guns and grenade launchers and a host of walkie-talkies.

“We have even seized from some convoys SAM (surface-to-air) missiles used to shoot down our helicopters,” said General Zafar Abbas, director-general of Pakistan’s Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF).

General Liaquat Toor, head of the ANF operations in Balochistan, the principal smuggling route for drugs from Afghanistan, said heroin smugglers were much better equipped than those who traded in hashish.

“For the hashish — about which we hardly mention but whose annual data entry measure tens of tonnes — the smugglers use old vehicles. The heroin traffickers always use new four-wheel-drive vehicles,” he said.

In the sandy courtyard of the police station in Turbat near the Iranian border, the seized off-road vehicles are lined up. Some are riddled with bullet holes. Others have been dismantled to get at their hidden drug consignments.

The roads are under constant surveillance, Toor said. But even that does not stop the traffickers.

“Since we started tracking them, they have started using camels to negotiate the difficult mountain passes to avoid us,” he added.

The 630km of pure heroin and 250km of morphine worth more than $50 million snared in Monday’s drug bust were being transported on 12 camels.

The impoverished Turbat region along the Arabian Sea is notorious for drug smuggling.—AFP