Armed And Elusive, Afghanistan Drug Dealers Roam FreeBy CARLOTTA GALL
Jan 2 2005Zaranj, Afghanistan — Seen from the air, the Margo desert, which sprawls across the far southwestern corner of Afghanistan toward the borders with Iran and Pakistan, is traced with white car tracks.
With its forbidding reputation as the “desert of death,” it deters most travelers but is the favored route of drug traffickers taking opium, heroin and hashish produced in Afghanistan to Iran for smuggling to Turkey and Europe. They cross in armed convoys of 10 to 20 pickup trucks, at such high speed that police officials say they cannot catch them.
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The desert crossing is part of a lucrative drug trade that threatens to turn Afghanistan into a narco-mafia state, U.N. and Afghan officials warn. Afghanistan, the biggest producer of opium in the world, is now the source of 90 percent of the heroin on Europe's streets, the U.N. anti-drug agency says.
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In Vienna, Austria, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, detailed the scale of the Afghan narcotics trade in a report last month. He said Iranian intelligence had shown him pictures of a drug convoy of more than 60 vehicles with armed protection making the crossing from Afghanistan to Iran in September 2003.
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=AD4EAAD2-448C-427B-950A-2C53283D9753
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