IRANIAN GATEWAY FOR THE AFGHAN DRUG CONNECTION

ON the wall outside of Iran's drug control agency are portraits of
anti-narcotics police officers. Thirty-five in all, each picture bears
the red rose of a martyr. All died in the line of duty, killed by drug
traffickers. That death toll would be high enough if it was incurred
in the course of a year. Those 35 lives were not lost over 12 months
however, but in a single day.

The men all died during a shoot out with a major drug smuggling gang
in south-west Iran last month and their fate was far from unusual.
Last year 193 Iranian police officers and soldiers were killed in
clashes with traffickers.

Buy heroin in Britain or Ireland and there is an eight in ten chance
that it was originally cultivated as opium poppies in Afghanistan and
if so it is all but certain that on its way to Europe it passed
through Iran.

The Islamic Republic is a 'transit country' for the drugs trade.
Esmaeil Afshari, a director of the drug control agency, said the sheer
volume of narcotics passing through the country's borders is far too
great to be stopped. Iran's limited successes only illustrate the
scale of the problem. Last year Iranian forces seized 253 tonnes of
drugs being transported through the country. But even that haul paled
in comparison to the 4,600 tonnes of opiate drugs the UN estimates
that Afghanistan produces each year. And that figure according to
Iranian intelligence estimates, may only be 80 per cent of the real
total. While most of the traffic passes on to distant markets, more
than enough stays in Iran itself.

The Iranian government estimates that there are more than two million
drug users among Iran's 65 million people of whom 1.2 million are
clinically addicted. Most are opium users and the interior ministry
estimates they are responsible for up to half of all crime in Iran.

Perhaps surprisingly for a country with a tradition of strict
abstention and a harsh penal code, Iran's approach to addiction is
relatively sympathetic with help provided through 55 state-funded
rehabilitation clinics. Understanding or not there is little
opportunity to ask the addicts themselves.

Foreign journalists are not encouraged to visit the clinics. "It might
not be understood. It might not be safe," says one police official in
response to an inquiry. Iran's struggle to keep out the substances
that fuel the addicts' habits has left its border with Afghanistan
resembling a war zone. Deep trenches have been dug, barbed wire fences
erected and heavily fortified, watch towers built.

In all 30,000 Iranian troops are deployed along the border with
Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the frontier is over 1,200 miles long
and even when Iranian forces do intercept drug smugglers in the vast
rocky plains and mountainous valleys they often find themselves
outnumbered and out-gunned.

According to Mr Afshari, the drug gangs are able to buy even the most
powerful weapons in the arms bazaars of Central Asia. "They travel in
caravans of dozens of cars, and the security cars have heavy weapons.
They have heavy machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers, and they have
even used Stinger missiles to shoot down our helicopters." Nor do the
people of the border provinces escape the traffickers, who often force
residents to transport drugs or face execution. Kidnapping is also
commonplace.

A group of Portuguese scientists abducted in Kerman province last
month were simply the most high profile victims of recent times.
Eventually released unharmed, they had been seized by a drug baron
demanding his son be released from an Iranian jail. The younger man
had been arrested after being found driving a truck carrying over a
tonne of opium.

The scientists were among the lucky ones. Iran estimates around 2000
cases of kidnapping take place along the border every year and not all
those abducted survive. Mohammed Nasser Tava-solizadah, an MP for one
of the frontier provinces, says people there live "in a state of
constant terror" because of the drug gangs. "If the people don't obey
the smugglers they or their families will be killed."

To defend residents, he has called on the Iranian government to allow
the formation of local armed militia groups. However, Mr Afshari said
responsibility for blocking the flow of drugs also rests with the
international community and particularly those states where the drugs
end their journey.

For the most part that means Europe, as raw opiates is shipped through
Iran to Turkey were it is refined and smuggled through the Balkans
into the European Union. Drugs are also smuggled to the Gulf states
with Oman a common staging point.

Britain has responded to that call recently donating body armour and
night vision goggles to Iran's drug police as well as giving pounds
1.2 million in direct aid. But that, says Mr Afshari, is a drop in the
ocean. "Iran spends $70 million every year on fighting drugs. We get
less than $4 million every year from the United Nations." The UN has
set a deadline of 2008 for a substantial reduction if not total halt
to international drug flows but according to one Iranian diplomat "If
we don't get more help that deadline is just a joke. If anything the
drug trade will grow. Afghan production rose by 20 per cent last year
and it just keeps growing.

"As well as helping control the border, Iran says the world must also
help wean Afghan farmers off cultivating opiates. Two decades of
conflict and upheaval has left Afghanistan one of the world's poorest
nations and destroyed the country's agriculture.

Not that the impoverished peasants farming poppies see much of the
profits from their labours: a kilogram of opium sells for $15 in
Afghanistan but by the time it reaches Tehran it brings $1,000.

Even that is a fraction of its final street price in Europe with the
huge mark up filtering back to cartels Tehran says are based in Turkey
and the former Soviet Union. Mr Afshari insists that the drugs barons
will only get richer until Iran gets more help from the rest of the
world.

"Europe says it guards its borders from drugs. But it must learn that
when it comes to drugs its borders are not in Europe but here in Iran.

"We are sending our sons to guard that border and they are giving
their lives. At least Europe could give them the equipment they need."