OPIUM DEN

In The Afghan Badlands, Add Drugs To A Devil's Brew

King Mohammed Zahir Shah, Afghanistan's last monarch, is likely to play a
principal role in organizing a new Afghan government should the U.S.
coalition or internal forces topple the militant Taliban government. The
86-year-old Zahir Shah, seen as a unifying figure by some anti-Talbian
forces, ruled Afghanistan for decades before he was deposed in 1973.

But, information is now emerging that could damage his new standing.
According to the former number 2 official in the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, Zahir Shah's inner circle was heavily involved in drug
trafficking during the early 1970s, even using his plane to smuggle hashish
to Italy.

The king himself was not linked to the drug business, says Terrence Burke,
the former deputy DEA administrator who was based in Afghanistan from 1971
to 1973. But, he says, a top powerful aide named Mohammed Rahim Panjshiri
and others close to Zahir Shah were profiting from the drug trade. He says
his information came from reliable informers and also from Sardar Sultan
Ghazi, whom he described as a first cousin of the king and a powerful
official in his own right. Burke says he has kept detailed notes from his
days in Afghanistan.

In June 1973, he says, Prince Ghazi pledged to inform King Zahir Shah of
the drug running but warned that Panjshiri was very powerful. "He selects
the ministers," Prince Ghazi said, according to Burke's recollection.
"People around the king were involved," says Burke, who nows run an
international investigative firm outside Denver.

Zahir Shah lives in Rome, his home since a cousin deposed him in August
1973. In an interview, Yusuf Nuristani, a close aide, says Zahir Shah had
no idea of any drug smuggling by his inner circle. He says Panjshiri, who
is dead, was a close of friend of the king.

Should Zahir Shah become a power broker in a new government, Burke's
disclosures could prove troublesome. Afghanistan has been a country awash
in opium and many of its leaders have been the principal feeders at the
trough. The militant Islamic Taliban government, terrorist Osama bin Laden
and, to a degree, the resistance group known as the Northern Alliance all
profit from heroin trafficking, according to American officials. "Heroin is
to Afghanistan," says one, "what oil is to Saddam Hussein."

Bin Laden's ties to the drug trade have been difficult to pin down. But,
American officials say that reliable intelligence reports from U.S. allies
have linked him and his terrorist al Qaeda network to the drug trade. Two
years ago, they say, Bin Laden even sought to develop a supercharged form
of heroin that he called the "Tears of Allah." He hoped the drug would
worsen addiction and even kill Americans and their allies, an official
says, but it proved to be "a chemical dud."

Opium and heroin may become a target of the U.S. war against the Taliban.
Some U.S. officials are convinced that drugs, stockpiled by the Taliban
after a ban in July 2000 in a reported scheme to drive up prices, must be
destroyed. Afghanistan became the world's largest producer of raw opium in
the 1990s, and the drug trade is seen as an important revenue stream,
particularly to the Taliban. In a recent report, the United Nations said
the Taliban buys arms and trains terrorists with some of the drug profits.

American officials estimate that the Taliban makes at least $50 million a
year by taxing and selling opium and by providing protection for smugglers.
Bin Laden also profits, they say, by providing armed fighters to protect
shipments. They say he did not need the money to finance his terrorist war
but wanted to cement his relationship with the Taliban, which has provided
him a safe haven since 1996.

It is not a pretty picture. In Afghanistan, explains one official, "nobody
wears a cape or a white hat."

- -- With Gordon Witkin and Eleni E. Dimmler