Afghan's Export Isn't Just Terrorism

AFGHANISTAN

EARLY SPRING

   EXPERTLY CUPPING THE BULB in one hand, a Kalashnikov draped over his shoulder, the farmer scored the soft flesh of the flowering plant with a sharp three bladed tool held by the other. He was careful as he made the shallow vertical incision, causing the yellowish-green poppy pod to tear. Glistening in the brilliant afternoon sunlight, a milky substance streamed down the curved surface, congealing as it made contact with the dry air. The farmer moved to the next bulb repeating the procedure - and on to the next one. All day he worked performing the same tedious task. Ten feet to his left and right other farmers, also with Kalashnikovs, did the same, and ten feet from them, more. And so on. Seemingly, as far as the eye could see, such was the activity. And the chest-high flowering plants moved gently; green waves of poppy, swaying in a pleasant valley breeze.

            Carefully surveying the irrigated sloping field, Hamid Ayub sat on a hillside. He was draped in his striped chapan coat, the long tail of a silk brown and gold turban falling over his shoulder. As the regional drug lord, he presided over the crop of poppy, a domain of many acres. He was pleased with what he could see. Hamid managed the poppy crop’s planting, irrigation, cultivation, and refinement. He’d received high marks for his proficiency. He was moving up.

Harvesting is time critical and weather sensitive. Heavy wind or rain disrupts production. The resin would be spoiled. But Hamid was an expert at what he did and used modern farming technologies as well as practices thousands of years old; a dichotomy of the ancient and modern, the Weather Doppler Radar inside his SUV and the stick in his hand.

With the stick he marked lines in the dirt, each line a day - his harvest calendar. The poppy tear would soon dry to a sticky resin that could be harvested the next day, when the farmers, his farmers, would scrape the pod clean. Harvesting would be performed four times, with three days in between each harvest. Just one acre of the ten acres in front of him would yield five kilograms of raw opium, one million dollars worth before being refined into heroin. It was a good business for Hamid, and business was growing.

The farmers once owned the fields that Hamid cared for, growing mostly wheat, but no longer. Already heavily involved in drug trafficking, not to mention labor racketeering, human slavery, loan sharking, hijacking, pier thefts, and assassinations, the Pashtun Mafia wanted to gain a tighter grip on heroin production; control every aspect. Recognizing the burgeoning growth of poppy and the profits involved, the Pashtun Mafia paid the farmers for the rights to the fields. At $300 per kilogram of raw opium harvested each season it was ten times what the farmer would be paid for the wheat crop. Not a trifle sum for “God’s own medicine.”

The Pashtun Mafia, working together with the Taliban, also provided protection.  “Don’t worry about the soldiers,” Hamid told concerned farmers. “We will keep you safe.” And they did. But that cost money, and often required force. No problem. Money was the easy part and was being spread around everywhere by all involved, it seemed. And there was a plethora of money to go around, some even coming in a roundabout way from the CIA. Corruption had always run rampant throughout the history of Afghanistan and now the tentacles of that corruption undulated from highest levels of  government to the family members that facilitated the lucrative opium trade and protected the farmers in the field. A shakedown financed by the American taxpayer to insure the world's heroin - the ultimate irony.

Smugglers were paid $800 per kilogram of opium bricks. National soldiers and national police, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan, needed to be bribed. When force was required, it could be meted out violently. When four members of the DEA trained drug task force were discovered in a poppy field, they were summarily executed – mob style; throats slit followed by decapitation. There was good reason for Hamid and the Pashtun Mafia to go to such extremes – refined heroin. And the real profit, the biggest windfall of all was wrought from the best heroin, heroin “No. 4.”

The crop started in early spring, when the farmers first manually hoed every square foot of Hamid’s fields, then sprinkled poppy seeds across the pulverized soil. After planting, the fields were irrigated, some by underground systems, some by trenches and some by hand, farmers using dried goat bladders to soak the seeds. Three months later the four-foot tubular plant would flower, the brightly colored petals soon littering the ground, exposing a bulbous seedpod ready for scoring.

Hamid examined the instrument for scoring. It appeared rudimentary, but its design was brilliant, three blades uniquely shaped to precisely score the pod for the maximum amount of opium sap. Hamid rubbed the blades with his thumb as he held the instrument, removing a small amount of black residue, rolling the congealed opium between his thumb and index finger.

Heroin was refined from the pure opium in labs throughout Afghanistan, with the final product smuggled into Pakistan through Baramcha, a border town without checkpoints. The army had left the town unguarded several years before. Ahmed Shah, the baron of the drug lords had seen to it. He was the leader of the Pashtun Mafia, and the man that Hamid called his “Godfather.”

A faint sound got Hamid’s attention. He stood. Rubbing his thick dark mustache, he searched with avid interest in the direction of the noise, now growing louder. He knew the sound well, familiar to Afghanistan for many years.

From rich, pink-hued, billowing clouds emerged a lone helicopter. Still small, and miles away, hardly a threat he quickly realized. He relaxed, sitting down again as the helicopter drew closer, now in a turn. Hamid laughed as the circling NATO observer dispensed flares, countermeasures for shoulder-fired missiles that would not be wasted on the unarmed craft.

Hamid calmly signaled an aide in the distance as he descended the rocky Afghan hillside to a waiting black SUV. He limped slightly as he negotiated the slope, the labored gate due to decades old shrapnel lodged deep in his leg.  He slid into the back seat, the door opened for him by a guard. Hamid was on the move - the destination, a laboratory where raw opium was refined into heroin and from there on to the black market to be picked up by smugglers. Speeding away, he gave the NATO helicopter a last passing glance, unconcerned. What can these people do now? This is our land and they will be forced out too!

The lab was hidden in the middle of Chaharbagh, a typical Afghan town of narrow dirt streets and high stonewalls. At one time it was a very poor town of twenty thousand Pashtuns, but now the Pashtun Mafia owned it. Heroin owned its soul. No longer poor and hungry, the many disregarded the old edicts of Islam against drug production. Once having banned opium, even the Taliban now justified heroin production as merely another weapon to be used against the West and the United States, a very deadly arrow in Allah’s quiver that the Mullahs authorized for Jihad.

Hamid’s SUV negotiated the main street, crowded with traffic, and sidewalks dotted with shops engaged in commerce. Women covered head to toe in light blue, intricately designed burqas milled about the street in twos and threes shopping from street vendors and stores. Many shopkeepers were openly selling heroin-refining chemicals, evidence of the prosperity brought about by the illicit heroin production.

Hamid pulled up to a ubiquitous gated property; security cameras at each corner of the building covering every square inch of the perimeter. The gate opened automatically to a covered courtyard, a small fountain in the middle, two boys playing in the water. Another SUV just like his was parked nearby; several armed men standing at the ready. Ahmed Shah was waiting for Hamid inside.

“Pe kher ragle – welcome,” Shah said in the native Pashto language as the drug lord entered the busy lab. He was sitting on the floor surrounded by stern armed guards, an AK-47 in his lap.

“Pe kher ragle Sultan,“ Hamid answered giving Shah his respect.

A small man, Ahmed Shah didn’t look like the most wanted man on the earth. Wearing a traditional wool Pakol hat and loose wool shirt and pants, Ahmed Shah may have been every bit Pashto, but his face resembled a man who was more European than Asian. Those that knew the drug baron before he had a $20 million price on his head remembered an even fairer appearance. Now he dyed his brown hair dark, used contacts to cover light blue eyes, and underwent plastic surgery, changing the shape on his nose, jaw, and cheeks. His was an extreme look, one of defiance – one of anger. Shah stood up.

“What is your daily output at this lab?” Shah asked.

“Sultan we are averaging thirty kilograms each day,” Hamid responded proudly. “And this lab is dedicated only to pure white.”

Shah quickly did the math and was impressed. He smiled. The price of heroin varied. Poor quality brown heroin used for smoking would fetch $1000 per kilo. Pure white No. 4 used by intravenous heroin addicts garnered three times that. The lab was producing almost $100,000 of pure white heroin. That same kilo though would be cut to only five percent pure by the time it hit the street in the United States or London. The “street value” of No. 4 was thirty times that. If Shah could control the distribution to the user, his lab was producing $3 million per day. “Thirty kilos you say. Allah is willing. Show me how we and Allah can accomplish this.”

“Of course Sultan, please follow me.”

Hamid led the group through a hallway into the main portion of the lab. The room was fifty feet by twenty-five feet, with traditional wool carpets haphazardly strewn on the cement floor. Two-dozen workers were engrossed in various tasks at tables throughout the large room and a strong pungent odor of raw opium filled the air, evidence that production was in full swing. A tall, thin man stood up from a table of six boys, all busy preparing the raw opium for refinement. The man was Baz Mohammed, a chemist. If it were a legitimate corporation, Hamid would be the regional manager, Baz Mohammed the plant production manager, and Shah the CEO.

Baz explained the process. He motioned to a large fifty-gallon drum filled with water. There were ten such drums. Attached to each were coils, obviously for heating the water, Shah presumed. He was right. “We first must produce morphine. We do so by heating the water, and I must say Sultan, that our efficiency has been improved with the addition of theses drums,” Bazz explained enthusiastically, the pitch of his voice somewhat elevated. “In the past, you may remember, we used a wood fire and thermometer. Now a computer monitors the temperature of the water, maintaining it at exactly eighty-five degrees centigrade.”

“The computer turns the coils on and off?” Shah asked.

Baz nodded his head, “The computer monitors every facet of the process Sultan. The raw opium is placed into the drums. Small blades on the bottom of the drums stir the mixture until all the raw opium is dissolved. Lime fertilizer is then automatically introduced which separates any organic waste. What remains near the surface is filtered as the solution is poured into the adjacent drum. Let me demonstrate for you Sultan Ahmed.”

Shah watched the chemist turn the water and opium into a chalky, almost milky liquid.

Baz continued, “We are now heating the second drum and adding high concentrations of ammonia. A chemical reaction causes the morphine, which is now a solid, to fall to the bottom of the drum.”

As Shah looked on, the second drum was also filtered through ordinary flannel screens. What remained were chunks of morphine weighing one tenth of the original raw opium brick.

Baz picked up a piece with a rubber-gloved hand and held it for Shah to inspect. “This, Sultan, is what the American Pharmaceutical Companies do not want us to legitimately produce – so we don’t.” The men laughed at the notion.

Shah knew exactly what Baz was getting at. Proposals were floating around think tanks to license the farming of Afghan opium for legal pharmaceutical uses such as painkillers, citing Afghanistan’s increasing opium production, reliance on poppy, and worldwide shortages of morphine. The plan called for opium producing villages such as Chaharbagh to be able to sell morphine and codeine directly to developing countries through preferential trade agreements. The think tanks also argued that not only would the consumption of illegal drugs be reduced, but other health risks associated with intravenous drug use, caused by dirty needles, such as Hepatitis, HIV, and AIDS, would be reduced. The idea hit a big roadblock. Tremendous lobbying efforts against such a plan came from major pharmaceutical companies, who called the idea nebulous. In reality, the drug titans didn’t want the competition. Instead of morphine, Baz made heroin, and in essence the drug companies and Shah were almost silent partners.

“Now I will demonstrate how we turn the morphine into heroin No. 4,” Baz said. “The process is dangerous, as you well know Sultan,” he added as they approached three giant Erlenmeyer flasks made of Plexiglas and held by an electrically powered vice over burners. Each was filled with a solution.

Hamid took over the briefing as Baz attended to a burner one flask rested on. “It is a five stage process. In each flask are ten kilos of morphine and ten kilos of acetic anhydride. They are heated for six hours until chemically bonded. In stage two the impurities are removed by treating the solution with water and chloroform. We then drain the solution into this container here.” Hamid nodded to Baz, who then moved the flask away from the burner, pouring the solution into another Plexiglas container. The chemist then added sodium carbonate.

Intrigued by the intricate operation, Shah moved in closer to study the chemical reactions. “Is this heroin?” he asked, seeing small particles falling to the bottom like tiny flakes in a snow globe.

Hamid smiled. “That is indeed heroin, but not what we export. What you see here Sultan is good for smoking. For our product we have two more stages. Those flakes are filtered using this pump.” Hamid rested his hand on an electric motor powering a suction tube connected to the container. Baz lowered a lid onto the top and turned the pump on. The flakes ran through the tube into yet another container.

“Here the heroin is being purified with alcohol and charcoal. We will then heat this container until the alcohol evaporates. What remains will be placed into a final flask you see Jamal holding.”

A young boy that Shah guessed was ten or eleven years old carried over a smaller Erlenmeyer flask half filled with alcohol. At the bottom of the flask was a plentiful amount of a white substance. “This?” Shah queried with a nod.

“Yes Sultan – that is heroin No. 4, before it has been removed and dried, but for your safety we will not demonstrate the actual process.”

Shah understood, knowing that ether and hydrochloric acid were used after stage four’s solution was dissolved in alcohol. The concoction produced small white flakes that were filtered under pressure and dried. The result was 99% pure. Done incorrectly though, the ether gas could ignite, destroying the lab.

Shah’s control over the poppy production was increasing, in part because of such ruthless tactics. He controlled through fear and intimidation as good as any. Even the Taliban respected him enough to leave him alone.

But Shah also needed the Taliban for protection; the protection of his convoys of heroin that drove into Pakistan and to the ports in Karachi, where ships were waited, ships to transport the No.4 white “directly to devil himself;” New York.

Ahmed Shah had spent years honing his distribution network, and at great personal risk. It wasn’t easy and many sacrifices had been made along the way. Poppy production was introduced to a new age because of his work. As opium production had exploded in the area known as the Golden Crescent, Shah negotiated numerous deals to facilitate the production and distribution of his high quality Afghan heroin. There were many dead bodies along the way too. Fear and intimidation were his primary method of negotiating, the same tactics used by his competitors.

The tour and brief over, Shah was escorted to the exit. As the door was opened to the courtyard, he suddenly felt himself lifted and hurled out the entrance, through the air, his body hitting the front door of the SUV hard, rendering him semiconscious.  He laid face up staring at the blue sky, now becoming obscured from the black smoke of an explosion that had ripped violently straight through the lab. The open door saved his life; a contained explosion would have certainly killed him, but the lab was virtually destroyed in entirety. Someone will pay dearly for this mistake, he decried.

“Sultan, Sultan,” a guard screamed, fearing the worst as he ran to the still motionless body of his leader.

Gradually, Shah stood assuring his men that he was unharmed. The same could not be said for Hamid, who was seriously injured, or Bazz, who now lay dead. Another guard handed Shah a pair of binoculars and pointed up. With ensuing great interest and revelation, Shah knew the explosion wasn’t the fault of a careless lab technician after all. High in the sky, nearly ten thousand feet above him, Shah could just barely make out the shape of a tiny dark gray object, a Predator drone.

            “Americans – they will pay,” he muttered to himself with visceral disdain. But he needed more protection and more money to turn his desire into reality. He’d call on his friends, be it in Kabul or Venezuela; those that could provide exactly what would be needed. But the price would be high.