THE REAL WAR ON DRUGS

The heroin-opium trade goes from Afghanistan through Iran to Turkey
and Europe. Iran is trying to stop the stuff at the Afghan border with
30,000 troops and police. Also walls, trenches and barbed wire.

John Daniszewski of the Los Angeles Times reports that in 15 years,
2,500 Iranians have died fighting drugs. The United Nations says 90
percent of all opium confiscated worldwide is seized in Iran, then
destroyed. But as Daniszewski points out, few Westerners know this
story or remember that before the 1979 revolution, Iran was a major
supplier of heroin. Now, it produces almost none. Iranians consider
stopping the drug trade a moral duty but also self-interest; the
epidemic infects their people, too.

Smugglers have a new strategy: They get camels addicted and teach them
where to go in Iran, carrying their cargo, for their next fix. No
chaperone is required.