Pakistan becoming a big source of heroin

Press, 9 June 1982, Page 13

Pakistan becoming a big source of heroin

By

DONALD KIRK

in Peshwar

A mob formed round the police when they raided a heroin factory in Pakistani tribal territory near the Afghan frontier. The angry tribesmen burnt a Government official's car in protest against the intrusion of authority into an area largely beyond the limits of the law since British colonial days. Several tribesmen were jailed or fined after the epidode but Pakistani and American officials are convinced the production of heroin is increasing in the tribal outlands. They estimate that at least 20 portable factories are converting opium into heroin at safe distances from main roads, and say that over the last two years the country has emerged as possibly the world's largest source of the drug. The American Ambassador to Pakistan. Mr Ronald Spiers. estimates that 70 per cent ci the heroin sold in the United States now comes from south-west Asia, much of it from or through Pakistan.

In a recent speech he warned of a rapidly increasing number of heroin-smok-ing addicts in main Pakistan cities. “Many of these new addicts are from your

middle-class and student groups." he said. Mr Spiers likened the problem to that of Thailand, whose leaders did not take heroin especially seriously until they suddenly realised the country had a serious internal addict problem that would have been much easier to deal with if it had been recognised and confronted earlier. For all the efforts of the United States in sounding the alert. American officials in Pakistan despair of staunch:, ing the flow of heroin. They say thousands of Pakistanis are involved in the shipment of heroin from Pakistan to foreign markets and see little possibility of preventing the trade as long as opium can be grown more or less freely in tribal territory. Ironically, the increase in heroin production is the result of a United Statesencouraged campaign by Pakistani .authorities to cut down on opium growing. In recent years, the amount of opium grown in Pakistan has fallen from 800 tonnes a vear to only 100 or 200 tonnes. Pakistani authorities stopped issuing licences for legal opium farms in what are called "settled areas." over which they exercise much more stringent con trol than in tribal territory.

At the same time they blocked the movement of opium wherever possible from the range of mountains along the Afghan frontier where the tribesmen cultivate it.

Tribal leaders eventually discovered that they could earn much more money by shipping heroin directly to buyers overseas. “They didn't need to sell so much opium to get rich." said one official, "and it's much harder to find heroin since it takes only a tenth as much space as the equivalent in raw opium." Heroin is easy to buy in the crowded market-place of Landi Kotal. a town near the end of the Khyber Pass.

Children freely offer hasish to passers-by. and merchants emerge from shops with promises of stronger stuff. One showed me hunks of raw opium, which he referred to as “brown sugar." along with heroin in the form of white powder. The heroin was $8 a gram. “Business is good." the merchant said. "Every day people come from America, France, Italy. Germany. Canada. Japan. Sell two or three, maybe five kilograms of heroin a month. Business is going up. This is the headquarters for drugs."- Copyright — London Observer Service.