DESERT VILLAGE THAT FEEDS A GLOBAL HEROIN HABIT

Jason Burke reports on the secrets of Chuttu, a 'superstore' for drug
traffickers the world over

In the cold light of a desert dawn 55 armed men crept through the wastelands
of eastern Iran. They were heading for a rocky valley where, according to
information extracted under torture from two suspected drug smugglers,
3,000kg of half-refined heroin was hidden. The men were from the Iranian Law
Enforcement Force (LEF), which tries to stop the flood of drugs across the
borders from Afghanistan and Pakistan and on to the West. On this occasion
last month, as on many others, the mission went badly wrong.

It seems that the smugglers were waiting, armed with night-vision equipment,
heavy machine guns and Stinger-type missiles. They even had the latest
satellite phones to call up reinforcements. The LEF unit was pinned down and
butchered. In a 14-hour firefight, 38 men died. In the past 13 years, 2,600
LEF men have been killed.

The smugglers had recently left Chuttu, a village on the southern edges of
the Dasht-i-Margi (Desert of Death) in southern Afghanistan. This year,
boosted by Afghanistan's biggest opium crop yet, Chuttu has become the
single largest source of the heroin on the streets of London, Liverpool and
Glasgow - and throughout the world.

"It is a one-stop shop for heroin traffickers," says one Western drug
enforcement officer. "It has everything they need. In a single day they can
buy the opium, arrange for its refinement into heroin and set up a 10,000kg
convoy to the West. And it will almost certainly get there. [Chuttu] is the
smack smugglers' superstore."

Pakistani drug-enforcement officers estimate that two-thirds of the heroin
sold in Britain has come through the village. Chuttu is just inside
Afghanistan, a few kilometres north of the Pakistani nuclear test site of
Chaghai. In the nearest city, Quetta, 300km away, is a single detachment of
Pakistani anti-narcotics personnel with two ageing MiG-17 helicopters. They
rarely venture near Chuttu.

The village is run by the local Baloch tribesmen. The Baloch have lived in
the region for thousands of years and are split between Iran, Pakistan and
Afghanistan. Their loyalty is to themselves and their fierce warrior code of
honour.

Even in Pakistan they are semi-autonomous; in Afghanistan the tribal elders
are the local lawmakers. No law enforcement official has ever been able to
visit Chuttu, and all that is known about the site has been gleaned from
interrogations, informants and surveillance. The village sits at the bottom
of a system of deep valleys and is defensible and well supplied with water -
essential for its 20 heroin-processing laboratories. Local tribesmen provide
the labour and are paid $2 for an eight-hour shift. They get overtime
bonuses when a big order comes in.

This autumn there have been a lot of big orders. A short drive across the
desert, and almost hidden amid the rocky plateaux and dusty crags, are thin
strips of well-irrigated fields. Last year 40,000 hectares were sown with
the drug, making Afghanistan the biggest single producer of opium in the
world. The United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) estimates that this
year the country produced 4,600 tonnes of opium - three-quarters of global
production.

It is grown by poor Afghan farmers and sold to dealers for about $50 a kilo.
It is by far the most lucrative crop to sow, and the Taliban regime, which
taxes opium as it does other crops, causes them few problems. Recently the
Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Omar, decreed that farmers should turn a
third of their fields over to other crops. To ask them to give up more, he
said, would undercut support for the regime.

Few expect even this order to be enforced. Sources in Islamabad say the
Taliban are not merely levying tax on opium but are making huge profits from
the heroin business. Copies of official receipts show that the regime
actively raises taxes on the transit of "white powder" (heroin), as well as
opium, through the territory it controls. The opium is bought in huge open
markets. One is at the village of Sangin. The head of the UNDCP in
Islamabad, Bernard Frahi, says he has spoken to one trader in Sangin who had
sold 28 tonnes of raw opium in a season.

Four-wheel-drive vehicles and lorries take the opium to Chuttu, where
dealers arrange for its processing and organise transport to the West.
According to a senior Pakistani drugs officer based in Quetta, individual
dealers in Chuttu hold stocks of up to 10 tonnes of refined heroin. Orders
are usually placed by satellite phones from Dubai, in the United Arab
Emirates, where most deals are made. The traffickers are often Turkish, but
sometimes British, German or south European. The smugglers then contact the
Baloch tribesmen to arrange a "caravan" of vehicles to take the heroin into
eastern Iran.

A typical convoy has up to 12 vehicles. Four will carry heavily armed
guards; the rest carry the cargo - usually a tonne of drugs. The convoys
often take mixed loads of hashish, refined heroin and its unrefined
constituents. With a kilogram of heroin worth $30,000 on London streets, one
convoy can carry drugs worth $250m.

The score or so traffickers killed each year by security forces are almost
always tribesmen. "They know nothing," says one Pakistani drugs officer. "It
doesn't make any difference if we kill them or capture them. They can give
us no names."

One name, however, that often does appear is that of Mullah Haji Bashar
Mahmud - a powerful warlord in southwest Afghanistan with connections at the
highest level of the Taliban. There are reports that Haji Bashar has been
involved in building two substantial airstrips in the desert in southern
Helmand province, in the heart of the opium-growing region. But there is no
evidence that substantial amounts of drugs are being flown out of the
airfields.

Instead traffickers rendezvous with articulated lorries in isolated
locations in eastern Iran before taking their cargo on to Turkey - where
half-refined heroin is often refined - or up through the lawless countries
of the Caucasus. A small amount of heroin from Chuttu is carried to Europe
in the stomachs of couriers.

Experts say the effects of the Chuttu operation are already being felt. "The
drugs business works like any other," one official in Islamabad says. "If
more comes in more easily, then prices drop."

Last month the British government announced a $1.8m grant to Iran, and it
will provide $500,000 for 1,000 or so bullet-proof vests for Iranian border
guards. The UNDCP's executive director says $13m will go to Iran to combat
drug smuggling. Western countries regularly assist the Pakistani
Anti-Narcotics Force.

According to one senior officer, Western aid is not enough. "It hardly makes
an impact. The traffickers are always one step ahead," he says. "This
problem is yet to peak . . . It will get a lot worse before it gets any
better."

The Guardian Weekly 30-12-1999, page 5