HEROIN MONEY COULD FUND KASHMIR'S MILITANTS

Kashmir's Growing Narcotics Trade Is Flourishing In Areas Where Militants
Are Most Active.

BANDIPORA, INDIA - Manzoor Ahmed is a very happy police chief. Just a month
ago, his investigators confiscated four kilos of heroin, tucked into the
back of an ordinary truck carrying apples.

But behind his proud exterior, Mr. Ahmed is worried about the dangers that
narcotics are starting to pose in his little corner of this Himalayan
valley.

For one thing, he knows that he can catch only a fraction of the smugglers.
And he suspects that the most active narcotics smugglers are well-armed
Kashmiri militants, who use narcotics as a business to pay for their violent
activities, and who have a tradition of fighting to the death.

"This is pure white heroin," says Ahmed, police chief of Bandipora. "The
militants get it in Pakistan, where it is cheap, about 3,000 rupees ($62) a
kilo. And they smuggle it across here, give it to their sympathizers and
sell down in Delhi or Bombay."

He picks up a few bags of the captured heroin and hands them to a visitor.
These drugs could fetch around $210,000 on international markets, Ahmed
says.

Threat To Security

In a region where Kalashnikovs can be bought illegally for $100, Kashmir's
growing narcotics trade presents a new threat to security.

Proving the link between narcotics and militant groups is difficult at best,
and Indian officials admit they have yet to capture a militant in the act of
smuggling.

But Indian Army officials and state police say there is no question that the
cultivation of narcotics in Kashmir and transport of narcotics through the
state has increased over the past decade, and that the areas where narcotics
are most often found are the same areas where militants are most active.

Narco-Terrorism

Most worrisome, Indian officials say, is that Kashmiri militant groups may
soon have enough funds from narcotics to operate independently of their
former patrons, Pakistan, which has officially banned and cut all ties to
the 14-year insurgency that has killed 40,000 so far.

"This is easy money for the militants, and they use it to fund their
activities," says Lt. Col. Mukhtiar Singh, spokesman for the Indian Army in
Srinagar. "In addition to that, foreign mercenaries use it," he says.

Indian officials admit they have no way to measure how much opium is coming
into the state, since Indian police catch only those consignments they have
prior information about. But since many of these heroin packs are
confiscated in districts along the Pakistani cease-fire line, where opium
cultivation is not common, police officials say the evidence points to the
heroin being smuggled in from Pakistan.

Afghanistan A 'Brand Name'

There is another sign as well. Many of the packages captured bear the phrase
"Made in Afghanistan" written in Farsi.

"It's a brand name, because the name Afghanistan sells," says a senior
police official at Baramulla district headquarters. "We don't know if it
actually comes from Afghanistan, but it does come from outside the state,
because we catch it in areas where opium is not grown."

There is reason to believe that some Afghan heroin is coming to Kashmir, if
only because instability and good rains have allowed Afghanistan to retake
its position of the world's No. 1 source of opium.

Kashmir's close location to Afghanistan and its wide swaths of lawless
territory make it an ideal transport route.

But even without an outside source, Kashmir would be awash in narcotics.

In July, Indian customs agents in the Anantnag district of south Kashmir
discovered an astounding 555 acres of opium poppies, with a potential yield
of 10,000 kilograms of opium. This amount of raw opium would be worth about
$2 million inside Kashmir; in international markets, once this is processed
into heroin, it would be worth much more.

New Thinking, Old Problems

The raids were all the more surprising, Indian customs agents say, because
they had been carried out in Bijbehara, the hometown of Kashmir's newly
elected chief minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

Mr. Sayeed, who could not be reached for this article, has repeatedly spoken
of his commitment to rid the state of narcotics.

But Sayeed was elected on a "healing touch" campaign platform that promised
to force state police agencies to adopt a friendlier line toward citizens,
and to dismantle many of the counter-insurgency agencies accused of human
rights abuses.

Local Cultivation

In Srinagar, Indian Customs chief M.S. Kamra says the greatest narcotics
challenge is not what comes from outside, but what is grown inside Kashmir
itself.

He leafs through photos full of white and pink poppies, and tall stalks of
cannabis, all being hacked down by a borrowed contingent of Indian Army
soldiers. "These things can be seen from the highway, there is nothing
concealed about it," says Mr. Kamra.

"There is a punishment of 10 years imprisonment for growing it, but it's
openly done," he adds.

He stops at a photo showing a field full of green opium pods.

"See this field is all ripe, ready for drawing out the opium," he says,
shaking his head. "It's lawlessness. Complete anarchy. If you cannot control
this, or you are not willing to control this, I don't think you can control
harder problems like militancy."

Looking For A Link

With each case, Kamra says he feels he is getting closer to the nexus of
narco-dealers and terrorists.

"In some of the cases, we found that people who indulge in carrying hashish
have gotten in touch with people who need weapons," Kamra says. "They become
a link between militants and narcotics."

In his police station in Bandipora in north Kashmir, police chief Ahmed
watches dozens of trucks pass through his town each day, carrying hundreds
of crates of apples down into India for sale. His past experience tells him
that any one of these trucks may be carrying hashish, opium, or heroin, but
without adequate intelligence tip-offs, he does not have the adequate
manpower or resources to check each one.

In the meantime, all he can do is watch.

"The militants get involved in narcotics for two main reasons," he says.
"One is to give to their fighters during suicide attacks, to give them
courage and to take away the pain. The second reason is fundraising.
Narcotics are very profitable."