U.S.-SUPPLIED AIRCRAFT HUNT HEROIN TRAFFICKERS

[AP] EDITOR'S NOTE: AP writer Matthew Pennington and photographer B.K.
Bangash joined a surveillance flight along the Pakistan-Afghan border to
investigate the heroin trade.

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) -- A small airplane with a heat-seeing camera flies
over moonlit, craggy desert along the Pakistan-Afghan frontier, circling
suspicious convoys of vehicles that appear with amazing clarity on a
monochrome screen.

In an effort to improve border security and stanch the flow of heroin
trafficked from top world producer Afghanistan, the U.S. has supplied
Pakistan with 10 Huey helicopters and three Cessna Caravan planes with
high-tech surveillance equipment.

But a chronic shortage of dedicated ground forces to pounce on smugglers
limits their impact. And rampant corruption that a former Afghan trafficker
says infects security forces and officials on both sides of the border
helps fuel the booming narcotics trade to Pakistan, across Europe and the
United States.

The war on drugs plays second fiddle to the war on terror along Pakistan's
border and draws little foreign funding, though this is a key route for
narcotics coming from Afghanistan, which grew enough opium last year to
refine about 450 tons of heroin.

While tens of thousands of Pakistani troops are deployed against
al-Qaida-linked militants and rebellious tribesmen, the Anti-Narcotics
Force has just 300 personnel in southwestern Baluchistan province, a barren
region the size of Germany. Much of Afghanistan's heroin is spirited out in
nighttime caravans of SUVs through this desert, headed south for Pakistan's
Arabian Sea coast or west into Iran, toward Turkey and Europe.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said the government's paramilitary
forces were focused on security rather than narcotics. "We just don't have
enough forces right now," he told The Associated Press. "Our hands are full."

To improve mobility across the vast terrain, the U.S. State Department
funded Pakistan's first "night-capable" air squadron. It started operating
in late 2004, piloted and maintained mostly by Pakistanis with support from
American contractors.

Since then, the 50th Aviation Squadron has often been drawn into service
ferrying forces and casualties during counterterrorism operations, and
until recently, against tribal renegades. It also helped relief efforts
during October's earthquake in northern Pakistan.

Geoffrey Krassy, a State Department senior aviation adviser, said the
squadron was now focusing on its counternarcotics mandate: surveying poppy
fields, supporting drug busts and monitoring the border.

The AP joined a recent surveillance mission along Pakistan's frontier with
the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.

The pilots - one Pakistani, one American instructor - took off using
night-vision goggles. The infrared camera on the underbelly of the unarmed
Cessna zeroed in on convoys threading along dirt tracks and dry river beds,
offering clues - if not proof - to whether they are regular long-haul
trucks or more suspicious, faster vehicles carrying illegal cargo.

"There's actually a couple of cars down there that might be (drug)
smugglers, and that could be the scout car out ahead," Krassy said,
spotting lights glowing in the desert. "There aren't so many routes to
take, so if we can identify a trafficker, forces can be sent to block the way."

That, at least, is the hope, but Pakistan lacks the capacity to act on
real-time tip-offs from such flights. Also, Western diplomats say bickering
neighbors Pakistan and Afghanistan share little intelligence on heroin
moving through the frontier. Relations have worsened over Afghan
allegations that Taliban militants launch cross-border attacks from Pakistan.

Yet graft is likely the biggest obstacle to battling traffickers.

A State Department narcotics control strategy report published in March
said Pakistan reported heroin and opium seizures by its various security
forces totaling more than 30 tons in 2005. But low government salaries and
endemic graft in Pakistan meant "narcotics-related corruption is likely to
be associated with the movement of large quantities of narcotics."

An Afghan whose father ran a heroin laboratory in the southern Afghan
province of Helmand told AP it was customary for traffickers to bribe
officials and security forces on both sides of the border.

He said bribes were usually $250-$415 per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of heroin,
which is sold to dealers inside Pakistan at $3,335 per kilo. Traffickers
paid off local administrators, police, border patrols, customs officials
and tribal chiefs to smooth the way, said the Afghan, an educated man in
his late 20s who sought anonymity for his own safety.

"You give bribes from the small fish, right up to the big sharks," said the
Afghan, who worked in his father's lab and joined armed drug smuggling
convoys. "Just give the bribes and you can do what you want."

Still, he recalled two incidents in Pakistan and Iran where bribes were
paid yet a trafficking group was caught with large heroin stashes after a
gunbattle. The haul was handed over to corrupt officials who freed the
smugglers.

In one case in 2003, Pakistani security forces seized 535 pounds of heroin
after a gunbattle near Chagai in Baluchistan. The traffickers were released
under a deal with authorities, the Afghan said.

Chagai top administrator Qamar Masood said administrative changes in the
area in 2004 left no record of the alleged incident.