THE DESERT VILLAGE THAT FEEDS UK'S HEROIN HABIT

Jason Burke Reveals The Source Of A Flood Of Drugs In Chuttu, An Afghan
'Superstore' For Traffickers

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, as on many others, the force's
mission went badly wrong.

Details are only now emerging of the incident last month, but 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 small village on the southern
edges of the Dasht-i-Margi (Desert of Death), which stretches across much
of southern Afghanistan. This year - boosted by Afghanistan's biggest ever
opium crop - 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,' said one Western drug
enforcement officer last week. '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.'

Drug enforcement officers in Pakistan estimate that at least two-thirds of
the heroin sold in Britain has come through the village. 'Ninety-five per
cent of heroin on British streets comes from Afghan opium,' one said. 'And
70 per cent of that comes from the south and west of the country. And
almost everything down there goes through Chuttu.'

The village is just inside Afghanistan - a few miles north of the Pakistani
nuclear test site of Chaghai. In the nearest city, Quetta, 200 miles away,
there 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, primarily from the Nuri
and the Murtazai clans. 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 both
defensible and well supplied with water - essential for the 20
heroin-processing laboratories run there. Local tribesmen provide the
labour and are paid pounds 1.20 for an eight-hour shift. They get overtime
bonuses when a big order comes in.

This autumn, say drug enforcement experts, 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 100,000 acres were sown with the drug, making Afghanistan the biggest
single producer of opium in the world.

The UNDCP, the United Nations Drug Control Programme, which has a base in
Islamabad and a monitoring network throughout Afghanistan, estimates that
this year the country produced 4,600 tonnes of opium - three-quarters of
global production.

The opium is grown by poor Afghan farmers and sold to dealers for about
pounds 30 a kilo. It is by far the most lucrative crop to sow and the
Taliban regime, which taxes opium like 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
regime, infamous for its hardline interpretation of Islamic law and support
for the wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden, is not merely levying tax on
opium but is making huge profits from the heroin business.

Copies of official Taliban receipts seen by The Observer 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, said he had spoken to one trader in Sangin who
had sold 28 tonnes of raw opium in a season.

Four-wheeled vehicles and trucks take the opium to Chuttu, where dealers
arrange for its processing and organise onward tranport to the West.
According to one 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. Western drug officials in Islamabad say that a typical convoy
- - such as the one that the LEF tried to stop last month with such fatal
results - has up to 12 four-wheeled vehicles.

Four will carry heavily armed guards and the rest the cargo - usually a
tonne of drugs. The convoys, which often carry goods for a number of
different traffickers, often take mixed loads of hashish, refined heroin
and its unrefined constituents. With a kilo of heroin worth pounds 20,000
on London streets, one convoy can carry drugs worth pounds 160m. The
transporters charge the traffickers pounds 1,200 a vehicle for each trip.

The score or so traffickers killed each year by security forces are almost
always tribesmen. 'They know nothing,' said 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 south-west Afghanistan with connections at
the highest level of the Taliban regime. There are reports that Haji Bashar
has been involved in the construction of 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 opium,
morphine base (half-refined heroin) or heroin itself are being flown out of
the airports.

Instead traffickers rendezvous with articulated lorries in isolated
locations in eastern Iran which then take their cargo on to Turkey - where
morphine base 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 in Islamabad said. 'If more
comes in more easily, then prices drop.' Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary,
has made his concern clear. 'This will have a direct and immediate impact
on the streets of our cities,' he said last month. But Western agencies and
local law enforcement officials in the region say that they are hampered by
lack of resources.

Last month the British Government announced a pounds 1.15m grant to Iran.
Britain's 20-year ban on the export of security equipment to Iran has
already been lifted, and the Government will provide pounds 300,000 for
1,020 bullet-proof vests for border guards.

The UNDCP's executive director has announced that $13m will go to Iran to
combat drug smuggling. Western countries also regularly assist the
Pakistani Anti-Narcotics Force. But, according to one senior officer
interviewed last week, the aid received from the West is not enough.

'It hardly makes an impact. The traffickers are always one step ahead,' he
said. 'This problem is yet to peak... It will get a lot worse before it
gets any better.'