DRUG RUNNERS DITCH CONVOYS FOR CAMELS
Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2003 6:06 pm
Drug Runners Ditch Motor Convoys for Camels
MIR JAVEH, Iran (Reuters) - Gone are the days of motor convoys bristling with machine guns and grenades. Today's drug smuggler in Iran uses camels.
Smugglers used to charge across Iran's porous eastern border in heavily armed motorcades but Iran's newly built network of concrete walls, ditches and sand barriers has forced them into the mountain passes from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Now their methods have changed, they use camels and backpacks," said Mohammad Fedayee Mollahshahi, commander of border control in the dusty, rugged border province of Sistan-Baluchestan, famed for its lawless tribesmen.
Mollahshahi said in the last eight months 28 smugglers and 17 border guards had died in 183 firefights on Iran's borders.
Antonio Maria Costa, director of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, visiting the border region Tuesday, said: "It is really war here."
The official IRNA news agency has reported battles with drug runners have killed more than 3,000 members of Iranian forces in the last 20 years.
Police stations in Baluchestan, whose provincial capital Zahedan used to be known as "Dozdha" -- Persian for robbers -- are decked out with dozens of photographs of officers killed on duty.
"Every year we suffer many martyrs so drugs do not reach Europe," said provincial Gov. Hossein Amini.
Britain says 75 percent of its heroin comes from Afghanistan, the world's biggest opium producer. "We are doing your job here in Sistan-Baluchestan," he added, sitting cross-legged at a lavish dinner in a Baluchi banqueting tent.
Iranian commanders told Costa their men needed unmanned surveillance aircraft, night goggles and the latest electronic gadgetry to catch traffickers.
Costa stressed the war on drugs had to be won at the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran nexus.
"It would be tragic if (this area) became a western Golden Triangle when the original Golden Trinagle -- Myanmar, Laos and Thailand -- is shutting down its opium trade," he said.
"To chase a gram of heroin in London or Paris will cost $100, while if we chase it in Afghanistan ... it is probably a dollar," he said in a country of two million addicts where they quip heroin is cheaper than cigarettes.
The answer is, he said, to find alternatives to poppy cultivation and the return of law in Afghanistan where traffickers make high profit at low risk.
MIR JAVEH, Iran (Reuters) - Gone are the days of motor convoys bristling with machine guns and grenades. Today's drug smuggler in Iran uses camels.
Smugglers used to charge across Iran's porous eastern border in heavily armed motorcades but Iran's newly built network of concrete walls, ditches and sand barriers has forced them into the mountain passes from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Now their methods have changed, they use camels and backpacks," said Mohammad Fedayee Mollahshahi, commander of border control in the dusty, rugged border province of Sistan-Baluchestan, famed for its lawless tribesmen.
Mollahshahi said in the last eight months 28 smugglers and 17 border guards had died in 183 firefights on Iran's borders.
Antonio Maria Costa, director of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, visiting the border region Tuesday, said: "It is really war here."
The official IRNA news agency has reported battles with drug runners have killed more than 3,000 members of Iranian forces in the last 20 years.
Police stations in Baluchestan, whose provincial capital Zahedan used to be known as "Dozdha" -- Persian for robbers -- are decked out with dozens of photographs of officers killed on duty.
"Every year we suffer many martyrs so drugs do not reach Europe," said provincial Gov. Hossein Amini.
Britain says 75 percent of its heroin comes from Afghanistan, the world's biggest opium producer. "We are doing your job here in Sistan-Baluchestan," he added, sitting cross-legged at a lavish dinner in a Baluchi banqueting tent.
Iranian commanders told Costa their men needed unmanned surveillance aircraft, night goggles and the latest electronic gadgetry to catch traffickers.
Costa stressed the war on drugs had to be won at the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran nexus.
"It would be tragic if (this area) became a western Golden Triangle when the original Golden Trinagle -- Myanmar, Laos and Thailand -- is shutting down its opium trade," he said.
"To chase a gram of heroin in London or Paris will cost $100, while if we chase it in Afghanistan ... it is probably a dollar," he said in a country of two million addicts where they quip heroin is cheaper than cigarettes.
The answer is, he said, to find alternatives to poppy cultivation and the return of law in Afghanistan where traffickers make high profit at low risk.