THE PUPS OF WAR

EXCLUSIVE: Special team training to hound drug barons across the world

BRITISH police are training an army of sniffer dogs to take the war on
international drug barons into their back yard.

The canine avengers are being sent worldwide to the secret routes drug
traffickers use to sneak heroin and cocaine into the UK.

A new unit has been opened to train sniffer dogs for customs work at home
and abroad.

Among the puppies who have been bred for international duty are some who
will become "currency sniffers", able to alert their handlers if passengers
are carrying large sums of money.

Drug dealers often take wads of cash when they travel, both to buy wares
and bribe their way across the globe.

Under new legislation revealed in the Queen's Speech, customs officers will
have the power to seize this money and it will be down to the suspects to
prove they obtained it legitimately.

The first two currency-sniffing dogs went to work at Heathrow in February
and more are on the way.

The dogs from the Metropolitan Police centre in Keston, Kent, have already
been making an impact.

This year they have sniffed out drug loads in Barbados, Antigua, St Lucia
and Grenada - major stop-overs for cocaine smugglers from Colombia.

Carlos, a two-year Labrador-springer cross, travels to Norway in a few
weeks time, where he will sniff out drugs on passengers and cargo for the
Anti-Smuggling Unit in Oslo.

By forming a one-dog barrier, Carlos will stop pushers who see Norway as an
easy pathway to the rest of Europe, including Britain.

The sniffer dogs are part of the Government's ten year drug strategy,
launched two years ago, which aims to keep drugs off our streets by helping
other countries stamp them out at source.

Drug Czar Keith Hellawell, who opened the Keston unit, said: "It's a simple
idea, but we realised there was no point trying to fight pushers on the
streets of London, Liverpool or Leith if drugs were continuing to get into
the country from around the world.

"Britain provides more police, customs officials, equipment, intelligence
and cash to fight drugs than almost any other nation."

Much of the heroin in Britain comes from war-torn Afghanistan, creating a
diplomatic minefield for the international community.

As most countries, including the UK, refuse to recognise the extremist
Taliban group in power, it is almost impossible to enter the country and
take on those growing heroin poppies.

Instead Mr Hellawell has concentrated his efforts on Afghanistan's borders.

He said: "We have had a lot of help and co-operation from Afghanistan's
neighbours.

"Most of them used to be heroin producers but we have persuaded many of
them to grow alternative crops.

"When we helped eradicate heroin production in Pakistan, four million
addicts were left behind.

"So these countries are more than happy to accept our help."

As well as helping Pakistan, the Government has sent flak jackets, vans and
night vision to Iran, where 2,500 soldiers have died in the last ten years
fighting the drug barons from across the border in Afghanistan.

>From countries like Iran and Pakistan, the heroin is taken to Turkey and
Eastern Europe.

A British customs officer and a policeman have been sent to the Bulgarian
and Romanian Interior Ministries to help with the problem there.

Much of the trafficking in Eastern Europe is conducted by crime lords.
Twenty members of the UK Crime Intelligence Unit are currently fighting
organised crime in Kosovo.

In Turkey, police are teaching investigators to stem the money-laundering
trade which has sprung up around heroin trafficking.

Most of the cocaine in Britain comes from the other side of the world,
Colombia, where an on-going battle between the legitimate government and
local war lords makes it hard to target drug production.

But in Colombia, rebels are reluctant to call a halt to drug production in
the areas they control because they use the money from it to fund their
war.

The main route out of South America is via the Caribbean, where British
police have trained their counterparts to intercept drug boats.