INSIDE THE AFGHAN DRUG TRADE

In a northern province, four law-enforcement officials describe life
built around trafficking.

The Afghan police chief doesn't realize his voice is being taped. So
pardon him if he brags about his life as a drug trafficker.

In a friendly conversation recorded in his home last summer, he tells
of his quarrels with another drug-dealing police commander in the
country's northern Takhar Province; about driving through a rival's
police checkpoint with 500 kilos of heroin in his car; and his
adventures in rescuing three heroin-smuggling friends from the
clutches of Tajik policemen. It's just another part of the job, he says.

"If my adventure were filmed, it would be a very exciting movie,"
chuckles the commander, referred to hereafter as "Ahmed Noor." On the
tape, he laughs. "The UN should give me an award."

But on one point the former mujahideen commander is certain: "Even if
all the world were to come to Afghanistan, they will not be able to
stop smuggling."

In relative terms, Mr. Noor is a small player in an illegal business
that generates $2.7 billion a year, more than half the value of the
country's legal economy. Afghan officials and foreign diplomats
increasingly call this central Asian country a "narco-state," as top
officials find it more profitable to flout laws than enforce them.

Very few major Afghan officials have been removed for involvement in
drug trafficking, in part because of the lack of evidence, and in
part because the country has only recently created special tribunals
to handle major drug cases.

For this reason, the Monitor launched its own investigation in a
province known for trafficking, to see how prevalent the drug trade
is among police chiefs and what evidence could be found. Sending an
investigative unit with a hidden minidisk recorder to the northern
province of Takhar - where Afghanistan's medium and low-grade heroin
is trafficked into Tajikistan, and on toward Europe - the Monitor
recorded four police commanders.

All of the names in this story have been changed. The Monitor deemed
it too dangerous for our investigators to confront each of these
commanders with the taped evidence, and too unfair to their
reputations to release their names without giving them a chance to
defend themselves. But the statements in these tapes - gathered by
investigators who have excellent reputations collecting testimony for
the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, among others -
provide a rare inside view of how drug corruption has trickled down
to the front lines in the country's faltering war on drugs.

Commander Dost

"Commander Dost" is commander of a border police unit that patrols a
large swath of the border with Tajikistan. In his taped conversation,
Dost reveals how widespread the drug trade has become, as police
commanders compete with each other to dominate the drug trade in
Takhar Province.

"For one year I did the smuggling," he says, on the lawn of his home.
"It was not hidden from anybody. It was obvious to everybody. I put
my RPG (rocket-propelled grenade launcher) on my shoulder.... I
became a dangerous smuggler."

But increasingly, Dost finds himself being run out of the drug
business by a group of more powerful police commanders. These
commanders have been shutting out all other competitors in the drug
trafficking business, says Commander Dost.

A few years back, one of these commanders sent eight men to ambush
Commander Dost. "Fortunately I had 25 of my [tribesmen] with me,"
says Dost. "I used the RPG and fired at the enemy in front of us, and
behind us. Finally I made about $70,000 for myself from the drug money."

But at one point, he was captured with $370,000 worth of heroin, and
had to sell everything he had - including his Swiss Rado watches and
most of his heavy weapons - in order to pay back the owners of that
drug. In another instance, Dost was captured by his chief competitor,
another police commander.

The commander "caught me once with 56 kg of drugs. He asked me, 'Will
you do it again?' and I told him that I would never do that again.
Right after I promised him that I would not do that again, I came
home and took another 100 kilos of drug and put it in my Russian jeep
and took it to sell."

"These persecutors do it themselves, like 300 kilos to 400 kilos each
time," Dost complains. These days, "all the smuggling is now in the
hands" of these commanders, "and no one can do anything without
[their] permission. Except me. When I do it, I tell my boys, 'Anybody
who wants to stop you, you should kill them.' "

Commander Nasir

"Commander Nasir" is the police commander of a border district in
Takhar Province. Like Commander Dost, Nasir is a relatively small
player in the drug trade, but he gives an inside picture of how some
of the bigger police commanders - both in Afghanistan and in
neighboring Tajikistan - punish drug-trafficking competitors to
burnish their law-enforcement credentials, or take bribes from those
willing to pay for favorable treatment.

"One day I counted how much I had given" a top police commander, says
Nasir, who was a longtime commander during the Russian war, fighting
alongside Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Masood. From drug
sales and fees, "it was $680,000, just in cash." Nasir pauses.
"$680,000! A lot of money, isn't it? But believe me, he [the
commander] never had any intention to do anything good for me in return, ever."

Nasir says all the big smuggling these days is being conducted by
relatives of this top commander, some of whom are police commanders
in Takhar. One relative "takes $50 per kilo to carry it from this
side to that side of the border near Tajikistan. And if he catches
somebody else smuggling, he takes $5,000 to $10,000 each time."

Nasir says he has stopped taking drugs across the border himself,
because he is too well known, but he continues to send his men to do
the job instead. Instead of paying his men immediately after a
successful mission, now he pays them a week later, so that competing
police commanders don't discover his smuggling until it's over.

"When I was a big smuggler, I had relations with the Tajik officers
on the other side of the border. But my competitor has relations with
the Russian KGB," he says. "[His] people have damaged my business a
lot. Once I lost $500,000 of heroin, another time $600,000, another
time $700,000, another time $900,000, another time $1.1 million
because of [his] people." Nasir laughs. "My opponents have knocked
out my 32 teeth."

But as bad as things are with the powerful commander - and after an
assassination attempt by the top commander against Nasir, relations
are pretty bad - Nasir says he wants to be practical and keep the
peace, for now.

"I have a lot of proof and evidence against [the commander]," he
says, "but I want to keep my relations good with him."

Ahmed Noor

"Ahmed Noor" is the police commander of a market town along the
Afghan-Tajik border in Takhar Province. In the tape, Mr. Noor admits
that he's involved in drug trafficking, and gives an up-to-date
breakdown of how much profit corrupt police officials make per kilo
in the drug trade. But Noor notes with chagrin that other, more
powerful commanders are making much more money than he is.

Mentioning one police commander by name, Noor says, "[He] is not
happy with $20,000 a night from drug money," he says. "He charged $40
per kilo to transport it to the other side of the border. [He]
himself is at home, resting and watching movies, and he plays cards
with friends."

This commander moves more than 600 kilos every night, and at $40 a
kilo, that's a hefty profit, Noor says. "Believe me, I know he did
this six times a week."

But while big players like this commander are able to move large
quantities of heroin through Takhar Province, and even through Noor's
own district, Noor says that this powerful commander won't share this
business with other commanders.

Once, Noor says, this commander warned Noor to stop trafficking in
drugs. Noor refused. So the commander started setting up checkpoints
to try to catch Noor in the act of smuggling. At one such checkpoint,
Noor was driving the car himself, and rather than stop at the
checkpoint, he floored the accelerator and attempted to run over an
armed soldier blocking the road.

"I had 500 kilos of drugs with me, and I was not going to give up
that easily," he says. "So I drove fast to run over the soldier. The
soldier runs away and shoots in the air. After I unloaded the car at
the border, I came back to the commander of the checkpoint, and asked
him why his soldier wanted to stop me. [The checkpoint commander]
told me it was the order of [the top commander]. So I warned [the
checkpoint commander] and told him that the drug money goes to [the
commander's] pocket, but why he is stopping other people's cars. I
told him, 'the next time you try to stop me, I will shoot your head
to pieces with bullets.' "

Noor admits that the drug business is getting more difficult, and his
business partners are becoming less trustworthy. "One day, I took 60
kilos of drugs to the other side of the border to Dushanbe, but the
Tajik smuggler took it and did not pay me," he says. "No one can do
anything to Tajik smugglers on their soil."

Noor blames the incident on his own sense of trust. "I believed one
of my Afghan friends, who told me that this Tajik guy pays better
than the others. I believed him."

Commander Bilal

"Commander Bilal" is a senior administrator in the provincial Takhar
police force, and a former police commander of a border district
along the Tajik border. In his tape, Bilal complains that police
discipline is breaking down, and the trafficking has become so
fractured that even low-level cops are starting to skim profits. More
important, he reveals that drug corruption has infiltrated deep
within the Ministry of Interior, the chief law-enforcement
organization, as top officials take bribes to appoint corrupt drug
dealers into top police positions.

On paper, Bilal is one of the most powerful police commanders in his
province, with many district commanders under him. But in reality,
with district commanders deeply involved in the drug trade, few of
the police officials in Takhar pay attention to him. Things were
better, Bilal says, when he was a district police commander.

But even then, it wasn't so good. As a trafficking point, his border
town was highly overrated.

"What have they seen [about that town]?" he asks. "There is only one
bridge, and anyone you send - even your brother - will not bring any
smuggler to you. If some one is caught there and brought to me, I
will get $10,000 from him [in bribes]. But that poor soldier standing
there will accept $200 from the smuggler [to let him pass through]
instead of bringing him to me. I can't stand there myself on the
bridge, because it is shameful."

In any case, Bilal says his relations with the drug smugglers was
never very warm. "I don't know why, but the smugglers did not trust
us," says Bilal.

He thinks for a moment, and then continues. One of his colleagues in
the police department in the border town, "was playing games with the
smugglers. [This commander] is the kind of person who cut a deal with
smugglers, takes money from them, and further on up the road, stops
and seizes their drugs, too. That was the reason the smugglers did
not trust us. "

Bilal says almost all the police commanders in Takhar have paid
officials at the Ministry of Interior to get their jobs, and
nowadays, commanders have to pay increasing amounts just to keep their jobs.

"Every three months the commanders are pushed a little bit or they
are told that they may be replaced. Then everybody rushes toward the
ministry with $10,000."

But Bilal says he likes his job. It's not the responsibilities that
he likes the most, though. It's the access to the drug trade. "It is
a good position," he says. "I pay $1,000 and get $20,000 in profit."

"It has some advantages," he says.

[sidebar]

AT THE MINISTRY OF INTERIOR, LITTLE EFFORT - OR ABILITY - TO END A
CORROSIVE TRADE

Top Afghan officials privately admit that perhaps 80 percent of the
personnel at the Ministry of Interior, Afghanistan's chief
law-enforcement agency - from local police chiefs up to the top
bureaucrats - may be benefiting from the drug trade. At a press
conference announcing his resignation last fall, Interior Minister
Ali Jalali said that the ministry had a list of 100 top officials who
were being watched for evidence of drug trafficking. The result is a
government that is either incapable or unwilling to prevent a trade
that is rapidly undermining the country's rule of law and the Afghan
people's faith in their leadership.

"The wrong elements can be a sapling in our society, and if we act
now, we can remove it with less damage," says Habibullah Qaderi,
Afghan minister for counternarcotics, a government agency that is
separate from the Ministry of Interior. "But if it becomes a tree,
there will be more destruction when you remove it."

Already the corrupt sapling is becoming a tree, Mr. Qaderi says,
adding that Afghanistan cannot afford to wait for the proof of guilt.
"If we had removed these people one by one, the country would have
been much much better." The Afghan people need to trust that their
government is working in the national interest. "People have to be
close with their government. The day there is a distance, that
becomes very dangerous."