Afghanistan Drug Distribution Networks
By around 1990, in southwestern Afghanistan, most farmers sold their opium gum produce immediately after harvest to traders or agents of processors. Some: poorer fanners short-sell their standing crops for 60 to 70 percent of their postharvest value. Many fanners, particularly those from Qandahar and Helmand, took their produce to Sanguin, in Helmand, which is the largest opium market in southwestern Afghanistan. Still others had their own processing arrangements or sell their opium directly to processors who in most cases are located near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in Balochistan. Farmers in Nangafiar and eastern Afghanistan sold their product under similar arrangements. The processing was formerly done inside the Khyber Agency but is now done inc~asinglyin Afghanistan.
As of 1990 almost all the opium-producing farmers except those in Badakhshan were Afghan Pashtuns, as was the population in the opium-growing areas. Among the traders, processors' agents, and those who collect and transport opium to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the southwest, there were a good number of Afghan Baloch. The traders in eastem Afghanistan and Badakhshan were also Pashtuns, Afghans, or from Pakistan's tribal mas such as Shinwari, Mohmands, and Afridi. The processos in the southwest were both Pashtun and Baloch, some originally from Iran. The Baloch probably shifted their operations to the region after the crackdown on narcotics by the Khomeini regime in 1979. Most of the procesors in Khyber were tribal area Pashtuns, though originally there were some "foreigners."
In the Pakistani border town of Chaman and in Quetta, the opium business was controlled for many years by members of border tribes of Achakzai and Noo~zai, many of whom belonged to the Hizb-e-Islami of Hekmatyar. Most of the growers and traders in Nangarhar, like everyone else there, ware associated with the Hizb-e-Islami of Khalis. It was well known that for many years before 1990 the Akhunzadas of Musa Qala controlled most of the opium business in southwestern Afghanistan.
Serving southwest Afghanistan, Balochistan has close to a 1200-km-long border with Afghanistan. For various reasons, as of 1990 there did not seem to be much heroin processing and trade activity to the north and east of Quetta. To the southwest until 1991 heroin laboratories existed on both sides of the border, most on the Pakistan side. All cunent indications are that since last year the factories have been moved to the Afghan side of the border because the Pakistan government had become more strict, seizing drugs and arresting people.
In the early 1990s, from Girdi Jungle, to the west of Quetta, the drugs were transported west toward Rabat along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and south toward the Makran coast along the deserts of Kharan and Makran. From Rabat, drugs enter Iranian Balochistan and then move on to other areas of Iran, finally reaching the Kurdish areas of Eastern Turkey. Southbound consignments reach Makran, from where some poxtion went to southern Iran, some portion was marketed in Makran itself, and the rest was transported by sea to Karachi or elsewhere. Most of the opium from Nangarhar and Badakhshan appeared to flow through the Khyber Agency of the Tribal Territories.
Although the farmers are drawn to poppy cultivation for a living, the majority of the profits go to the traffickers, warlords, militia leaders, and even the Taliban, al Qaeda, and Hizb-i-Islami (HIG). By 2004 the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami militants were relying on drug profits for funding. According to the New York Times [Carlotta Gall, “Afghan Poppy Growing Reaches Record Level, U.N. Says,” New York Times, November 19, 2004,] ten to fifteen percent of the opium trade goes to HIG warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who funds Islamic militants in Chechnya and Uzbekistan with $120 million per year. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency receives payoffs from traffickers and assists in trafficking the heroin once inside the country. Logically, because the ISI is the patron of the Taliban, it, too, must profit from the heroin trade.
