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JUST SAY 'NO'?
Flood
of cheap heroin
In the wake of George Bush's cowboy adventure over in Afghanistan, America and Western Europe can expect a flood of cheap of heroin and opium to pour into their countries. That's the word just in from the front lines. Just about what you would expect from a retarded president, who has always refused to say whether he ever inhaled or snorted.
Flood
tide of cheap heroin, opium is expected By JOHN POMFRET QUETTA, Pakistan—As the United States wages war on terrorism in Afghanistan, concern is mounting about an unintended casualty: America's war on drugs. Heroin and opium are believed to be flooding into Pakistan and soon could be coming to the West. Wholesale heroin prices are dropping. Afghan farmers, after a year's hiatus, are preparing their fields for a winter crop of opium poppies. And as the United States and Pakistan seek tribal leaders who would be willing to turn against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement, some candidates have been involved in the drug trade for decades. "Things were looking good for a while" said Abdul Malik, the chief psychiatist in Quetta's main hospital and director of heroin treatment for the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. "But with this war, it is going to get a lot worse for everybody—us and the West. The only people who will profit are the traffickers." And possibly the terrorists. Bernard Frahi, the U.N. Drug Control Program representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, warned in an interview that a resurgent heroin trade could hamper the West's war on terrorism. "Before the war, Osama had enough money," Frahi said, referring to terrorist Osama bin Laden, who is being harbored in Afghanistan by the Taliban. "Now his bank accounts are frozen. What is he going to do? Turn rapidly to drug trafficking through networks that exist already." In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said the possible resurgence of the Afghan drug trade "is something that concerns us, and it is a way that the Taliban have found funding for their regime—which, of course, supports (bin Laden's) al-Qaida network." Optimism fades For years, Afghanistan produced more opium than any other country—accounting for more than three-quarters of the world supply in 1999, according to the United Nations. Last year, a Taliban imposed ban on opium poppy growing, along with a three-year drought, slashed the country's output—though not its stockpiles—and some analysts voiced optimism that the problem was beginning to abate. But in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, a flood of opium and heroin moved out of Afghan warehouses into Pakistan, mostly through this border region, anti-narcotics officials and trades say. Small dealers dumped their product on the market, both in Quetta and in Karachi, Abdul Malik said. Today, the wholesale price for a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of heroin in Karachi, one of the world centers of the heroin trade, is one-third of the $4,800 it cost before Sept. 11, a Pakistani narcotics officer said. Pakistani government sources prediced that tons of heroin would begin to flow from Karachi's port to Western Europe and the United States once the war > ends and security in the region loosens. "Whatever they have, they would like to cash out—or move out of—Afghanistan," said LiaQuat Ali Toor, the head of the army-run Anti-Narcotics Force in the areas bordering Afghanistan. "But right now, no one dares to move the goods around too much. There is heightened security everywhere. After the security relaxes, we will have alot of work to do." In addition, after the breakdown of law and order caused by U.S. attacks, Afghan farmers in several provinces are preparing their fields for a new poppy crop, analysts say. Frahi said he had received reports from Nangarhar and Kandahar provices that peasants were preparing their fields for poppies as opposed to wheat. The telltale signs, he said, involve a special kind of tilling. The earth is not plowed flat; rather, it is tilled so it rises and falls in small hills and valleys. "Last year at this time, no one was cultivating poppies. Now it's a bad sign," Frahi said. Remember the LIBERTY! |
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