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  Iran Fighting a Losing Drug War
Posted by FoM on July 17, 2001 at 22:00:20 PT
By Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service 
Source: Washington Post 

justice The call to arms wailed over the loudspeakers of the village mosque: "Get ready to fight!" Two dozen men and boys clutching Kalashnikov assault rifles raced out of their baked-mud houses, clambered aboard trucks and headed for battle across an east Iranian desert already seared by the 8 a.m. sun.

Within two hours, 130 police officers and armed volunteers from surrounding villages converged on the enemy -- suspected Afghan drug smugglers who had stopped to have tea on the side of a narrow mountain road.

"We circled around them, there were shouts, and the shooting started," said Ibrahim Gholami, 68, chief of the Koohsefid village guards and one of several participants who described the recent confrontation. "We killed four of them." They also rescued a hostage who had been kidnapped from a nearby village by the alleged smugglers.

Here in the austere badlands along its eastern border with Afghanistan, Iran is waging one of the world's most violent and hard-fought campaigns against drug trafficking. A nation that Washington labels a sponsor of international terrorism, Iran has become the critical bulwark between the globe's largest opium supplier and consumers in Europe, the Middle East and, increasingly, the United States.

Last year Iran seized 85 percent of all the opium and nearly half of the heroin and morphine captured worldwide -- 278 tons of opiates, according to the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention.

Even so, officials here concede they are losing this war.

"If we built the Great Wall of China, the traffickers would still find a way to get in," said Hossein Ketabdar, the anti-drug chief of Khorasan province, which is jammed against Afghanistan and Turkmenistan on Iran's eastern border. "We shoot one today, and tomorrow there are two."

More than 3,000 Iranian law enforcement officers have been killed in combat with suspected drug traffickers in the past two decades, most on the border with Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan. Last year Iranian police and village guards waged more than 1,500 gunfights with narcotics traffickers, an average of about four a day.

The drug runners regularly outnumber and outgun the police. Iranian authorities have reported drug caravans with dozens of vehicles and pack animals, guarded by men equipped with antiaircraft missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, night-vision goggles and satellite telephones.

In an effort to stanch the hemorrhage of illegal drugs across its borders, the Iranian government has armed tens of thousands of villagers, constructed hundreds of miles of trenches, berms and fences, and posted 30,000 armed law enforcement officers on its vast borders.

"No other country has taken the fight to the Afghan drug trade to this extent," the U.S. State Department wrote in its most recent annual report on international drug trafficking.

Afghanistan's illegal drug trade has escalated dramatically and become vastly more organized, profitable and violent since the Taliban, a radical Islamic militia, took control of most of the country five years ago, according to Iranian and international law enforcement officials.

Last year, Afghanistan produced 70 percent of the world's opium -- three times the output of Burma, its closest competitor. And, in the past two years, Afghan drug organizations have increased profits by producing their own high-grade heroin rather than exporting opium, heroin's principal ingredient, for processing.

Several months ago, one of the Taliban's top clerics issued a decree banning the farming of poppies, the raw material in opium and heroin. Although opium seizures have dropped in the past six months, skeptical Iranian officials said they believe the announcement was a ploy to drive up the price of opium, which had fallen to record lows, and to use up huge stockpiles that had collected in Afghan warehouses. International authorities said it will take two or three more harvests to determine whether the decree is being enforced.

More than two decades of isolation from much of the outside world has left Iran poorly prepared for its escalating drug war. Traffickers have more advanced telecommunications equipment and weapons than do the police. Drug detection techniques are outdated. Antiquated laws that only now are being rewritten have made it virtually impossible to pursue drug-related money laundering cases, conduct undercover drug operations or arrest traffickers for possessing the chemicals used in making morphine and heroin.

As a result, Khorasan's anti-drug chief, Ketabdar, made the kind of plea to the outside world that a man in his position would not have dared utter even a few years ago: "We need help."

The traffickers' success stems in part from Iran's rugged geography. For hundreds of years, invading forces have swarmed through the nearby passes of the 1000 Mosque Mountains and marauded across the sepia desert flatlands that do not separate Iran and Afghanistan so much as blur the boundary between them.

That makes the border all the more appealing to modern invaders like Hassan Ayoub, 38, an Afghan whose thick, black mustache dominates his freckled face. Ayoub said he used to make the clandestine trip across the border at least twice a year, packing 30 to 80 pounds of opium in a knapsack or on the back of a donkey. Today he is among the 55 percent of the inmate population in Mashhad Central Prison in the capital of Khorasan province who are serving time on drug charges.

Although Ayoub's story was impossible to verify independently, it was typical of the accounts repeated by many Afghan traffickers: He worked another man's land, taking home one-tenth of the earnings from each season's harvest of wheat and barley. Then came the droughts, and he was earning one-tenth of next to nothing.

For Ayoub, becoming a drug courier was as easy as walking into one of the many opium storehouses in his west Afghanistan city of Herat, barely 70 miles from the Iranian border.

"They'd leave it open like a shop," Ayoub said. "Anyone could come in. You take something and agree to bring it to Iran." Runners are required to return 60 percent of their proceeds to the warehouse. Some gangs reportedly also rent weapons to couriers.

Last year, Ayoub decided to stay in Iran, working the distribution networks from this side of the border. When he didn't return to Herat with his last payment, his brother-in-law was taken hostage. Although he was released after two months under orders that he report Ayoub's whereabouts, Ayoub said he has sent his wife and two young children into hiding for fear they will be abducted.

That brutal enforcement tactic has prompted many smugglers who lose their drugs in police ambushes to, in turn, kidnap Iranian villagers for ransom to make their payments, according to Iranian police.

This cycle of violence has taken a heavy toll among the people of eastern Iran. In Koohsefid, a mud village molded from the desert floor of northeastern Khorasan province, Gholami, a farmer, husband to three wives and father of 22 children, commands the 30-member volunteer guard force.

About 30 miles from Turkmenistan, just over 60 miles from the Afghan border and 500 miles from the Iranian capital, Tehran, there are few signs of the 21st century. Houses are constructed of baked mud. Village women take turns baking flat bread each day in a communal mud oven. The hamlet of 300 inhabitants has one telephone and no satellite dish.

No place in all of Iran has been hit harder by the drug war than Khorasan province. Iranian officials have identified 90 smuggling routes into the province, and last year law enforcement authorities seized 44 tons of drugs here, more than in any other location in the country. Sixty-two law enforcement officers and 840 suspected drug traffickers died in gunfights.

"Drugs have always been smuggled around here," said Gholami, a fur cap perched over his sun-creased face even in the 100-degree heat. "But in the last four years, the activity has intensified. Now they kidnap ordinary people and hold them hostage in the mountains."

Last year, Gholami said one of his sons-in-law was kidnapped as he was guarding his sheep. During one 10-day period last December, Iranian law enforcement authorities in Khorasan said they shot dead 82 suspected Afghan drug traffickers and freed 64 hostages the traffickers had reportedly held captive.

"We're always afraid," said 13-year-old Maryam Bahonar as she washed tea glasses in a muddy stream that trickled through Qalepokhtook, a border village about a 40-minute drive from Koohsefid. "We're worried they might come and attack us." Kidnappings and raids against villagers for food and shelter have become so common that the government has armed civilians in 1,000 Khorasan villages with "tens of thousands" of AK-47s and machine guns, according to law enforcement authorities.

"Whoever's capable of holding a gun can be a volunteer," said Mohammad Gholami, 62, who leads the Qalepokhtook guards and is the brother of Koohsefid's commander. "If it's necessary, we'll arm the women as well."

Note: Armed Villagers Struggle to Seal Afghanistan Border

Koohsefid, Iran

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service
Published: Wednesday, July 18, 2001; Page A01
Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company
Contact: letterstoed@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Related Articles:

U.N. Panel Accuses Taliban of Selling Drugs
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9867.shtml

Taliban Do What 'Just Say No' Could Not
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9849.shtml


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Comment #4 posted by Kush on July 18, 2001 at 11:06:52 PT:

the above
I agree.

I think drug legalisation would be a start at stopping some of these deaths.

"War...what is it good 4? (absolutley nuthin!)"

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Comment #3 posted by Kevin Hebert on July 18, 2001 at 10:51:14 PT:

Sad but true
You are right Pontifex. We give millions to the Taliban and praise whoever wages the drug war in our way -- the wrong way. The long-ago discredited way.

Kap, I agree with you too. It is a nagging question in my mind: why, when it is so readily apparant that the use of violence will never stop drugs, do we continue to do it? Why is the use of force the first and foremost -- and, in most cases, only -- solution we have?

We teach our children that violence is wrong, yet we encourage deplorable violence by making drugs and drug use criminal. It's insane. Who will be brave enough to stand up and say "Enough! No More!"? Who?

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Comment #2 posted by Pontifex on July 18, 2001 at 08:38:41 PT:

Drug war still a profitable enterprise in Iran
Kaptinemo, you're quite right. I would only add that the
other sure way to make money quickly in Iran is to prey
on the drug traffickers. The average Iranian law
enforcement officer may have his days numbered, but
you can bet that his superiors are profiting handsomely
from their little caravan raids. Thousands of years ago,
the same thing was happening to the silk trade. Little
has changed except the weaponry.

It seems Iran has finally found a form of totalitarianism
the U.S. can approve of.


[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on July 18, 2001 at 05:57:50 PT:

I'm surprised no one has commented yet
So I will.

People, we've heard all kinds of tripe from the antis. But my favorite bit of lunacy has always been:

"If we fought this Drugwar like a real war, we'd lick the drug cartels!"

Well, the Iranians are doing just that. Against people who

"...regularly outnumber and outgun the police. Iranian authorities have reported drug caravans with dozens of vehicles and pack animals, guarded by men equipped with antiaircraft missiles

(Remember what I was saying a few months ago about how all that lovely US-purchased ordnance had been there for the selling after the Sovs left Afghanistan? Well, just like I said, there it is. And how much do you think has been sold to the narcos in Colombia?)

rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, night-vision goggles and satellite telephones.

And it still doesn't work:

""If we built the Great Wall of China, the traffickers would still find a way to get in," said Hossein Ketabdar, the anti-drug chief of Khorasan province, which is jammed against Afghanistan and Turkmenistan on Iran's eastern border. "We shoot one today, and tomorrow there are two."

More likely twenty. That area is dirt poor from years of warfare; the only sure way to make money quickly is the drug trade.

But what about the costs to the Iranians?

"More than 3,000 Iranian law enforcement officers have been killed in combat with suspected drug traffickers in the past two decades, most on the border with Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan. Last year Iranian police and village guards waged more than 1,500 gunfights with narcotics traffickers, an average of about four a day.

Any good with figures? No? Then just remember one old soldier's advice: sooner or later, your luck runs out. Sooner or later, you meet the bullet with your name on it. 4 firefights a day can drastically curtail your chances of living a long life and having a family.

And all because of dimwits who think they can legislate and/ or bully their way out of a problem:

"Afghanistan's illegal drug trade has escalated dramatically and become vastly more organized, profitable and violent since the Taliban, a radical Islamic militia, took control of most of the country five years ago, according to Iranian and international law enforcement officials.

Squeeze the balloon here, it bulges there. Squeeze it there, it bulges here. Easy enough to figure out; so why do pols have such a hard time tumbling to something a 5 year old learns in a heartbeat? The brutally simple economics of the situation make it abundantly clear that this is not a fluke:

"Although Ayoub's story was impossible to verify independently, it was typical of the accounts repeated by many Afghan traffickers: He worked another man's land, taking home one-tenth of the earnings from each season's harvest of wheat and barley. Then came the droughts, and he was earning one-tenth of next to nothing."

Just like some folks we know down Colombia way, no? Squeezed by poverty, they do the only thing they can to survive...and growing beans isn't anywhere near as profitable as growing and/or couriering dope. CROP SUBSTITUTION DOESN'T WORK.

No matter what they do, they can't stop it. Even when they do treat it as a shooting war, they lose. Stupid, stupid, stupid.




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