AFGHAN ECONOMY GETS HIGH ON HEROIN

In Montreal's drug circles, they used to call him the Mountain Man. At 6
feet, 3 inches and about 220 pounds, Abdul Majid Sulaymankhil was a
towering figure in the heroin, hashish and arms trade out of Afghanistan.

The Mountain Man "is a very imposing figure who demands respect," one
police source told The Gazette. Among drug dealers, he had a reputation for
going "ballistic" if he wasn't paid on time.

Even more troubling, security sources say, Sulaymankhil is a fundamentalist
Muslim with links to Afghanistan's Taliban movement.

There's one other thing. He's a Canadian citizen.

In 1992, sources say, Sulaymankhil walked into the Canadian embassy in
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and applied for landed-immigrant status for himself,
his wife and their five children. It was granted. The couple moved to
Ontario and, in 1995, they became Canadian citizens.

Now, Sulaymankhil is in prison in Dubai and Canada wants him back home to
face charges that he conspired to import four tonnes of hashish into the
Port of Montreal.

In light of the drug charges, Ottawa is also investigating how he became a
Canadian citizen.

There is, however, one problem.

The Gazette has learned that his file has been lost since the immigration
office in Riyadh moved in 1998 to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Sources also said that at the same time that he received his citizenship,
Sulaymankhil was being investigated by the RCMP in Toronto for heroin
trafficking. This raises serious questions about the thoroughness of
Canada's immigration checks.

In Montreal, RCMP drug agents began investigating Sulaymankhil last year
when he was mentioned during wiretapped conversations among local drug
traffickers. They usually referred to him as the Mountain Man;
occasionally, they called him "Haji," an honorary title given to someone
who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the Haj.

The RCMP discovered the identity of the Mountain Man when they followed
Ernst Pitt, another suspect in the plan to bring hashish into Montreal, on
a trip to Bangkok, Thailand, last February.

The two-year investigation uncovered an international network of drug
trafficking and money laundering. In May, it led to the arrest of 21
people, including Sulaymankhil in Dubai.

Thai police filmed Pitt meeting with Sulaymankhil, who was dressed in
traditional Afghan clothes.

Also at the meeting were two of the Mountain Man's Indian associates, who
are now in jail in New Delhi awaiting extradition to Canada on drug
charges. Pitt was arrested May 15 and is in jail in Paris, also waiting to
hear whether he'll be extradited to Canada to face drug charges.

Sulaymankhil's background is unclear. On his Thai landing card, he claimed
he was born in Tajikistan; his Canadian citizenship papers state he was
born in Kabul in January 1954.

Since becoming a Canadian, he has mainly lived in Dubai, where, his
ex-lawyer told The Gazette, he owns a "big car dealership." He also owns a
heavy-machinery company that sources say is a front for drug trafficking.

The Indian government goes even farther. Sometime before 1998, it barred
Sulaymankhil from entering India, claiming he is a money launderer, a drug
trafficker and an arms dealer linked to Taliban and terrorist groups.

Since his arrest, the Mountain Man has been desperately trying to get out
of jail in Dubai.

His former lawyer, Hussain Al-Jaziri, said in an interview that
Sulaymankhil fired him two weeks ago. "We couldn't help him either for
extradition to Canada or to bail him so he appointed another lawyer," he said.

He added the extradition - a ruling is expected soon - is "a very sensitive
affair" for both Dubai and Canada in light of the war in Afghanistan.

The Mountain Man's trail is also the story of how Afghanistan's Taliban
government has used drugs to finance locally based terrorist networks.

Police say Sulaymankhil's drug route begins in the vast poppy and marijuana
fields of Afghanistan. There, Indian officials claim, he runs heroin
laboratories that are protected by the Taliban. RCMP investigators say his
drugs go through Pakistan and then by boat to Maputo in Mozambique. There,
the drugs are offloaded and trucked to Johannesburg, where they are
repackaged, rebranded and sent on to North America in containers labeled as
garments.

Canada is also trying to extradite several men police believe are tied to
Sulaymankhil's plan to bring hashish into Montreal: Abdul Qudir, now in a
South African jail, is believed to be the South African shipper, and a
relative of his, Mohammad Farooq, also faces drug charges here.

Farooq is a Pakistani who lives in Lisbon, Portugal, with his wife. His two
children go to private schools in England. He is also a fugitive from
Pakistan, where he has been sentenced to death for heroin trafficking. His
whereabouts are unknown.

Sulaymankhil's drugs, police sources say, were distributed in Canada by a
network that included biker gangs. As part of the sweep of the drug
network, police also issued a warrant for the arrest of Hells Angels Nomad
member Louis Roy. Roy disappeared last year and police suspect he is dead.

The drug ring also included a money-laundering operation. Mohammad Anwar
Hussain of Toronto has pleaded guilty to laundering more than $1 million
and is serving a three-year sentence. Mohammad H. Ghazipura of Mississauga,
Ont., is in jail awaiting trial on money-laundering charges. The United
States also wants him extradited for an arson case in Texas.

D D D

Sulaymankhil, with his thick black mustache, heavy eyebrows and eagle nose,
is a true son of Afghanistan's bleak history.

As the country was reduced to ruins, he became rich. He benefited as two
decades of war destroyed its agriculture, transforming the mountainous
country into the world's largest producer of opium. In 1999, it was
responsible for 79 per cent of the world's opium production, compared with
about 5 per cent 20 years earlier.

Before the war, about 85 per cent of Afghanistan's 23 million people were
farmers working on about 2.6 million hectares of arable land.

War transformed this food-producing economy into an opium economy.

While neighbouring Turkey, Iran and Pakistan severely curtailed opium
production, Afghanistan, devastated politically and economically, became a
drug state.

Simply put, poppies were profitable. By the time the Russians withdrew in
1989, Afghanistan was producing 35 per cent of the world's opium compared
with less than 12 per cent a decade earlier.

Opium provided money for farmers and jobs for migrant workers. When civil
war broke out after the Russians left, cash from opium, heroin and hashish
bought the weapons and fed the armies of rival factions. By 1999,
Afghanistan was producing most of the world's illicit opium and had
established its own heroin laboratories.

Along with that came "an infrastructure - transport, communications, arms,
and protection - which the warring factions needed to retain their zones of
influence," a United Nations report states.

Afghanistan's traditional transit trade helped the flow of drugs into
neighbouring countries. Sealed containers moved back and forth between the
Persian Gulf states, Pakistan and India. The Taliban took over the trade in
1996 and used it to assure the smooth passage of drugs.

With encouragement from the Taliban, most of the irrigated land of Helmand
and Nangahar provinces, which border Pakistan, were used to cultivate poppies.

How much has the Taliban government benefited from opium and heroin? For a
start, it hits farmers with a 10-per-cent agricultural tax called the
"ushr" and a 20-per-cent religious tax called the "zakat." The UN estimated
the 1999 crop - the largest so far at 4,600 tonnes - was worth $389 million
to farmers. The Taliban's cut: $116 million. With control of
transportation, provincial Taliban leaders also got a cut.

The largest profits, however, went to international traffickers. A kilo of
opium sold by an Afghan farmer for $540 is sold in North America as heroin
for $450,000.

The trade has driven up addiction rates in neighbouring Pakistan,
Tukmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Women in particular have become
addicted.

"A lot of women in Afghanistan have taken to drugs because of losing their
men in battles, losing kids and having their legs blown off by landmines,"
said Vincent McClean, director of the UN's Drug Control Program office in
New York.

While Pakistan has banned poppy cultivation, reports indicate that its
secret service, Inter Service Intelligence, has used proceeds of heroin
trafficking to finance rebel groups in Indian Kashmir and to pay for its
nuclear weapons program.

D D D

Meantime, rising addiction rates in Europe and North America led the UN to
ask the Taliban to ban opium cultivation altogether. The UN offered to
finance alternative crops for farmers, but the Taliban ended the
negotiations with no agreement and production continued to expand.

The UN Security Council reacted in 1999 by imposing sanctions on
Afghanistan. This had the desired effect. Last year, the Taliban banned
poppy growing. A recent UN report estimates that opium production was
reduced this year by about 75 per cent. But a large quantity of opium and
heroin has been stockpiled and it is reported that these are now being sold
off. Also, production continues in areas controlled by the rebel Northern
Alliance.

As the Afghan tragedy unfolds, food production continues to plunge. A
three-year drought has destroyed most seed grain and farmers have
"virtually no productive assets" to begin the next planting season,
according to the UN. Whatever irrigation still exists is used for poppy fields.

It is from this that Sulaymankhil made his profit. Like many traffickers,
he left Afghanistan to live elsewhere. In Canada, he owns a home near
Toronto. In Dubai, he builds his businesses and, police allege, organizes
his extensive drug trafficking.

Meanwhile, the war on terrorism in Afghanistan has created concerns of a
resurgence in the opium trade. Prices have already increased because of a
growing scarcity of stocks. Opium went from a low of $43 a kilo to $360
last May, the UN states.

Bernard Frahi, the UN Drug Control program representative for Pakistan and
Afghanistan, recently told reporters that he expects the Taliban to be
looking for more money to buy weapons to fight off the Americans.

Philip Reeker, a U.S. State Department deputy spokesman, said this may lead
to a resurgence of the Afghan drug trade, "something that concerns us."

It is, he says "a way that the Taliban has found funding for their regime -
which of course supports (Osama bin Laden's) Al-Qa'ida network."