SMUGGLERS FLOOD WEST WITH OPIUM

OSH, Kyrgyzstan (AP) High in the jagged Pamir Mountains, where wolves and
snow leopards prowl a desolate no man's land, small squads of men are
fighting a losing battle against a rising tide of opium and heroin sweeping
toward the West.

Foot soldiers in the war on drugs, these police and customs agents stand
sentinel along the remote alpine highway that threads north from
Afghanistan into the rockribbed underbelly of Central Asia.

But often they are only spectators to the torrent of drugs streaming along
the legendary Silk Road routes toward Russia and beyond.

``See those slopes over there?'' customs officer Dzhanibek Abdulayev says,
gesturing toward craggy peaks looming over his primitive checkpoint for
trucks at KyzylArt, some 14,000 feet high on the Tajikistan border.

``Often we see smugglers there, but what can we do? Practically nothing. We
can't run after them at this altitude. We can't shoot at them because we
have no weapons. And we're not properly dressed or equipped to launch an
expedition.''

He shakes his head in frustration. ``Without assistance, we're practically
helpless.''

Once plied by ancient caravans carrying spices and cloth from the Orient to
the West, the Silk Road has been transformed into one of the world's
primary drug routes since the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

Much of the contraband passes over the 450mile highway to Osh from
Afghanistan, the region's top opiumgrowing country. The lucrative cargo is
welded inside trucks, smuggled through remote passes on horseback or
guaranteed passage by bribes.

Outmanned narcotics teams across Central Asia have confiscated several tons
of opium and shut down dozens of labs that turn poppies into bricks of
opium gum, morphine or heroin. At police headquarters in Osh, rancid bags
of contraband are heaped high in a locked room full of seizures from recent
years.

But authorities admit the hauls are only a tiny fraction of what gets
through an amount they won't even guess at.

``This region is not yet as big in trafficking as Colombia or `the Golden
Triangle' (of Burma, Laos and Thailand), but it has all the ingredients to
become the worst drug trafficking zone in the world,'' says Srinivasa
Reddy, an expert in Uzbekistan for the U.N. Drug Control Program.

The hub is Osh, a 3,000yearold settlement on a scorched plain whose role
as a world drug center lurks beneath a timeless surface.

Long before mullahs' mournful prayers break the predawn stillness, roads
outside the city fill with villagers headed to the bazaar on horsedrawn
carts piled high with hay. Men in traditional whitetasseled hats hawk
Chinese goods next to women selling Frisbeesized bread loaves hot enough
to burn your hands.

But poverty and the end of Soviet authoritarianism have led many to succumb
to new temptations, and this city of 500,000 people is now known for
``khanka'' raw opium. Waiters in cafes know the going price, and a
murmured exchange can close an instant sale of foilwrapped opium the size
of a stick of gum for 20 Kyrgyz soms, the equivalent of $1.30.

The potential for profit is enormous. A kilogram 2.2 pounds of pure
opium that costs $100 when it leaves Afghanistan sells for $750 in Osh and
as much as $8,000 in Moscow. The same amount of heroin fetches $20,000 in
Osh, $100,000 in Moscow.

No wonder you can spot Kyrgyz customs agents wearing Rolex watches.

While Sovietera statues still exalt Lenin, today's true powers are a half
dozen druglords whose identities are Central Asia's worstkept secret.

In a country where 49 percent of the people live below the poverty line,
according to the World Bank, these men brazenly parade their success in
Mercedes and sprawling new houses.

Wearing a black silk shirt and black pants and flashing an acornsized gold
ring, potbellied Erlan not his real name reputedly runs one of the six
primary trafficking groups in Kyrgyzstan, all based in Osh. While the
average Kyrgyz income is 400 soms ($27) a month, police say he flew to
Moscow this year and laid out $42,000 in cash for a new BMW.

The reputed drug baron and a police narcotics officer can be seen sipping
cognac together occasionally at an exclusive government retreat.

Police claim the drug lords operate with impunity because officers do not
have the resources or surveillance equipment to nab them. The 19 men in the
Osh narcotics unit have no guns and just three battered Russian vehicles.
Cops take taxis to drug busts, or walk.

``Our guys are working simply out of pure patriotism,'' says the department
chief, Kamil Abdurakhmanov. ``These narcocriminals just laugh at us we
on our white horses.''

Often, though, payoffs overpower patriotism. The U.S. State Department says
Russian border guards, Afghan warlords, Tajik government and opposition
leaders and Kyrgyz officials all are in on drug profits. In Osh, three
narcotics officers were caught on the take this year and fired.

One policeman, whose monthly salary is 600 soms ($40), confides that he is
sorely tempted to accept the gangs' tantalizing offer to switch sides
``enough to take care of me for life.'' He has resisted only out of fear of
putting his family at risk, he says.

Osh police say the best they can do is tap the drug barons and their opium
armies for information. Every so often, the smugglers will feed them the
whereabouts of a drug runner, or a rival's shipment.

Without such tips, scouring the Sovietmade cargo trucks that rumble over
the Pamirs from Khorog, Tajikistan, is a needleinahaystack search for
hidden drugs.

At one of the main mountain outposts, surrounded by barren snowcapped
peaks, six policemen in ski caps recently took turns checking the trucks
rolling through on a frosty day.

They live for weeks at a time in a tiny wooden hut with a dirt floor.
Conditions are so harsh that a team of drugsniffing spaniels died of
exposure or altitude sickness within days.

``Even if you have information a truck is carrying drugs, it can take a
whole day to check it,'' says police Capt. Baket Baterbekov.

Watching as selected Tajik drivers comply with orders to dismantle parts of
their vehicles, he points out more than 40 nooks and crannies where he has
found stashes in the past.

By comparison, laser kits now available in the United States enable
narcotics police to thoroughly scan a vehicle in 15 minutes.

``We need equipment, but all we get are promises, promises, promises'' from
Kyrgyz authorities and the West, Baterbekov says bitterly.

These mountain inspectors are the first and often last line of defense in
the effort to stem the river of drugs, whose northward flow is facilitated
by the chaos in warstricken Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Once in Osh, the opium and heroin will fan out across Central Asia and
mostly move into Russia by plane, train or car, much of it destined for
Europe or the United States, the No. 1 heroinconsuming country.

The international community has been slow to react, although Western
governments recently began to show more concern.

``It's really an alarming situation,'' says Renate Ehmer, a U.N. drug
official in Central Asia.

Copyright 1997 The Associated Press.