Chemical tests pinpoint source over two years
Nick Hopkins, crime correspondent
Thursday October 4, 2001
The Guardian
The extent of the trade in heroin between Afghanistan and the UK was underlined yesterday when it was revealed that every seizure in Britain over the last two years has been sourced to poppy fields controlled by the Taliban or the Northern Alliance.
Investigators say there is “almost no evidence” of heroin coming to the UK and Europe from elsewhere in the world and believe that the terrorist atrocities in the US could be a “defining moment” for the worldwide heroin industry, depending on the sort of military action that is undertaken and how much disruption this causes.
One concern for the intelligence services is that the Taliban, which banned the cultivation of poppies after a bumper crop in 1999 and pressure from the UN, could allow its farmers to start sowing again on the basis that the regime has nothing to lose.
The move would be popular and seen as an act of defiance against the US-led coalition, although questions have often been raised about the true effectiveness of the ban in a country as large and unpoliced as Afghanistan.
The incentive to start cultivating again has been heightened by the recent halting of a United Nations Drugs Control Project scheme to give aid to Afghan farmers who have ceased poppy growing.
British investigators said yesterday that they believe Osama bin Laden has benefited financially from Afghanistan’s drug trade, despite no evidence to show that he or his supporters have been involved in the business directly.
Before the poppy ban, the Taliban took effective control of the heroin market by taxing the crop, and it is thought that Bin Laden has been funded from the income raised.
A source said Afghanistan had been a war zone for more than two decades and had no natural resources, so poppy was the only product it could sell. “You cannot live in Afghanistan and not benefit from the drugs trade. It’s the principle source of tax revenue.”
Drug investigators believe the true picture of the heroin trade between Afghanistan and the UK is even worse than the one painted by the prime minister, Tony Blair, who told the Labour party conference on Tuesday that 90% of the drugs sold on British streets hail from the troubled central Asian country.
Using chemical profiling of heroin shipments, Customs and Excise has been able to identify Afghanistan as the source of all its seizures over the last two years. Investigators believe that this pattern is reflected across Europe.
Investigators warned there is growing evidence that heroin prices are being slashed as wholesale dealers in Afghan border towns off-load their stockpiles for processing in Pakistan and Turkey, fearing they will be bombed in any military campaign.
The Home Office has played down fears that the UK will soon be flooded with heroin because the country already has a steady supply and steady street price, but drug investigators are bracing themselves for a glut in the market that could make the drug cheaper .
Mr Blair said on Tuesday that the Afghan heroin industry was “another part of the [Taliban] regime that we should seek to destroy”, but there is no sign that a government led by the Northern Alliance would be any better.
The UN believes that the Northern Alliance has made no effort to stop the production, refining and export of heroin from its own territory, despite promises to do so.
