Hitting Heroin

Agents score a big drug bust

Like a scene out of an adventure film, the tank truck rumbles to a stop at the frontier checkpoint, churning up a cloud of dust. A border guard comes out to check the driver's identity papers. Suddenly a squad of armed customs agents bursts from a nearby hut. The driver guns the engine and slams through the barricade. The agents open fire. The truck swerves to a stop. Four men leap out and escape into the gathering dusk. The agents, led by a 39-year-old Pathan tribesman named Jehangir Khan, are only perfunctory in their pursuit. They are more interested in the truck's cargo: 421 kilos of heroin, worth $250 million uncut and up to $1 billion on the streets of Western Europe and the U.S.

The drug bust last week between the Khyber Pass and Peshawar in northwest Pakistan was one of the biggest in history. Yet it represented just a fraction of the exports from the so-called Golden Crescent, an area spanning parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran that produces the lion's share of the world's heroin. The raw material for the drug is grown in 100,000 acres of opium-poppy fields, processed in local laboratories and smuggled out through Pakistan. The Golden Crescent accounts for as much as 90% of the heroin sold in Western Europe and more than half that sold in the U.S.

At American urging, Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq has cracked down on the narcotics industry in his country. Officials of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington, which works closely with the Pakistanis, estimate that their joint efforts have stopped only about 10% of the traffic out of the area. But they feel that Pakistan is serious about fighting heroin production. Last year about 2,000 kilos of heroin were seized in the country, and they hope for an even better showing this year.

Khan, a specially trained Pakistani customs official, has cultivated a network of informants throughout the Golden Crescent. All of them are smugglers who turned to informing to make more money or to settle old scores. Since moving to Peshawar three years ago, Khan has seized 1,458 kilos of heroin. "I do not feel any sense of elation when we make a big bust," says Khan. "What I worry about is whether my informant's cover has been blown. If it has, then it means we have a lot of time to make up."

Khan has no illusions about what can really be achieved. In the Golden Crescent, smuggling and smugglers' routes are almost as old as the Khyber Pass. Says Khan of the prospects for his antidrug crusade: "When the hills disappear, only then can you expect the traffic to end." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.