FROM ASIAN HILLS TO VEINS OF ADDICTS

One of the residues of the past decade of strife in Central Asia is a
massive increase in the production and export of heroin from the "Golden
Crescent" along the "Opium River" to Europe, writes JIM CUSACK

To the Dublin shopkeeper robbed at syringe point or the families destroyed
by addiction, the dynamics of conflict in faraway places like Tajikistan
and Nagorno-Karabakh, the rise of organised crime in Turkey and the ending
of the conflict in former Yugoslavia may be distant, but these events have
a very direct bearing on the Dublin drug problem.

The street seller of heroin in Dublin buys his product from a local
distributor who is supplied by one of the big dealers, like Tommy "The
Boxer" Mullen who bought from a Turkish trafficker in England whose gang
imported and distilled opium brought overland from the growing fields in
faraway places like the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan.

Turkish gangs account for 95 per cent of the heroin brought into northern
Europe. Last year, the UK police and customs seized 1.5 tonnes of heroin
and arrested members of 105 separate Turkish drug gangs. A similar scenario
is being enacted in other EU states.

Until a few years ago, the Turks had not played a significant role in the
heroin trade into Europe. The heroin from the "Golden Crescent" region of
Pakistan, Afghanistan and southern Iran had to make its way by sea or
through the Middle East to reach the markets in the West. Most of the
heroin was consumed in the local market: Pakistan has more than 1.5 million
addicts. This area is distinct from the opium-producing region of Burma,
Laos and Thailand known as the "Golden Triangle".

The ending of Soviet control in Central Asia produced a much more direct
route to Europe across the Caucasus to refineries in Turkey and then
through the Balkans and into Europe. There are no effective barriers to
stem the flow of heroin along what the Observatoir Geopolitique des Drogues
in Paris has termed the "Opium River".

The source of the river is found in places like Afghanistan and the Pamir
Mountains and Chu Valley where tens of thousands of acres are used for
growing Papaver Somniferum, the opium poppy. The Pamiri people, mainly Shia
Muslims, are among the poorest of Central Asia. They harvest the milky
white exudate from the unripe seed pods. This is dried to produce opium and
they sell it cheaply to traders.

It is then transported through Turkmanistan or its neighbours, across or
around the Caspian Sea. The Transcaucasian routes are controlled by a
mixture of organised criminals and nationalist groups, and corrupt military
and political officials who have emerged from the chaos of the Soviet
break-up.

The heroin is produced in refineries mainly in Turkey but also in
Kazakstan, Armenia and Kurdistan. In Turkey, a powerful Maffya with strong
political links has emerged from the groups of feudal militias, the
right-wing extremist network known as the Grey Wolves (the group which
tried to assassinate the Pope) and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PPK).

Refineries are located mainly in south-east Turkey. Large amounts of acetic
anhydride, the chemical needed to refine the opium into heroin, have been
traced travelling from northern Europe via Macedonia or Bulgaria to
refineries in Anatolia. Refineries are said to be selling the refined
product at about $20,000 a kilo. Once in northern Europe a kilo of 43 per
cent pure heroin is available for around $60,000.

Turkish gangs use a variety of routes into Europe: through the Ukraine into
Hungary; Belarus into Poland; and Slovenia into Italy. The gangs have their
drug masterminds and organisers in Amsterdam and Germany.

En route to Ireland, the heroin passes through England where a kilo is
estimated to cost around Stg£80,000 (about £100,000 in Ireland).

A direct link between the Irish market and the Turkish Maffya emerged last
year when Mullen was arrested last March in Hampstead, in London, carrying
a bag containing Stg£105,000 with which he intended to buy heroin from
Turhan Mustafa. He and Mustafa were imprisoned last month for trafficking.

Mullen, who is still only 26, had graduated from selling packets of heroin
on the streets of the north inner city to become one of the Dublin's more
important dealers in only two years. He had become sufficiently successful
by 1996 to leave his local distribution networks to local dealers and move
to London.

When not enjoying the profits of his trade in expensive Spanish holiday
resorts, Mullen was sending consignments, usually of less than a kilo,
mainly through the ferry routes across the Irish Sea to Dublin, completing
the drug's journey from the Pamiri mountains through all the middle-men
into the veins and lungs of addicts on the streets of Dublin.