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Afghan General Sets Sights On Desert Traffickers
Wednesday, January 9, 2002
(17:44)
By Guy Dinmore
The Financial Times

The smuggler described how camels addicted to opium would be trained to cross the desert alone, bearing their cargoes until they reached their next fix. Another technique was to force camels to swallow up to 5kg of opium in plastic bags then lead them to slaughter-houses inside Iran.

ZARANJ, Afghanistan -- Source
The drought that has destroyed the lives of millions of Afghans and Iranians has been a bonus for the drug barons transporting opium and heroin to Europe.

The great Helmand river, its tributaries and surrounding marshlands once threw up a considerable natural obstacle where the borders of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan meet. Today, after three years without a drop of rain, the once mighty waterways are a sandy wasteland.

Across this wilderness, obscured by frequent dust storms, self-navigating camels, individual smugglers with backpacks and even four-wheel-drive vehicles ply their deadly trade. Drugs and illegal migrants move west, as traders return with fresh supplies of weapons.

Some 90 per cent of the heroin that reaches the streets of Europe comes this way, as well as all the opium that supplies the many addicts of Iran.
(More: Financial Times News Source)
2002 © The Financial Times Limited.

Dan