From opium to heroin

In 1974 the Richard Helms, a former CIA agent and ambassador to Iran, reported that there was limited cross border trade in opium, but little, if any heroin production. Things changed radically after the Soviet invasion in 1979. As Afghani resistance gathered pace, Soviet reprisals began to devastate the economy in rebel territory. With the systematic destruction of rural infrastructure by Soviet armed forces, farmers began to switch to crops that were less perishable and could be taken to foreign markets, increasingly to Pakistan. Opium exports provided income not just to purchase staples, but also to feed the war effort. One war lord in Helmand Valley, Mullah Nasim Akhundzada, for example decreed that over half the land would be planted with opium, because “we must grow and sell opium to fight out holy war against the Russian non-believers.”

Over the first decade Afghans cultivated the poppy, produced the opium, and transported it across a maze of mountain passes into neighbouring Pakistan. In the largely independent and only poorly controlled North West Frontier province dozens of small scale heroin laboratories appeared, run often in collusion with Pakistani security agents from the Inter Service Intelligence. The ISI were channelling US and Saudi military supplies for Afghani mujahideen fighting against the occupying Soviets, and were receiving opium in return. Though destined for Western markets, much of the heroin spilled over locally, and the number of heroin addicts in Pakistan rose from 5,000 in 1980 to 1,200,000 in 1985. In response, the Pakistani army mounted a campaign against these laboratories in the 1990s. Many simply crossed into Afghanistan, where by 2005 an estimated 75 % of opium was estimated to be converted into over 400 tonnes of heroin.

A network of laboratories has now sprung up across the country, employing thousands of people including children under precarious conditions. They are exposed to dangerous chemicals, may easily become addicted themselves, and are at risk of being ambushed by rival gangs or government forces. For years, the emphasis on poppy production and the heroin export masked the rising incidence of problematic drug use within Afghanistan. Interestingly, this was driven not so much by the ready availability of these drugs, but by demand from refugees returning from Pakistan and Iran. Both countries prohibited opium smoking in the late 1970s and have subsequently witnessed a sharp increase in intravenous heroin use. This practice was adopted by many Afghanis fleeing from war and destruction into the vast refugee camps inside Pakistan and Iran.

Returning to Afghanistan after the eviction of the Taliban, often unwillingly, many of these people have moved to cities like Kabul or Herat, finding shelter in the ruins of former war zones, like the notorious Soviet cultural centre in Kabul. There are also large numbers of traumatised war widows, orphans, former combatants and the destitute, vulnerable to heroin and without social institutions like families to protect them against addiction or facilitate their rehabilitation. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimate some 50,000 are heroin users in Afghanistan today, and as control efforts are raising the risks for exporters, this market is becoming more attractive for risk adverse heroin traders. In all likelihood domestic heroin and opiate use is going to increase in the near future.

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