The Golden Opium Path

The Bush Administration is stirring up another long time enemy in the Middle East: heroin. Opium poppies have driven the Afghanistani economy for a long time. Early in their tenures, the Taliban and the Northern Alliance stopped much of the smuggling. But that was short lived. As pressure from the US increased on the Taliban, opium because a major funding mechanism.
We owe much to this efficient infrastructure of opium smuggling to the Reagan Administration who encouraged the Afghan resistence to Russia to use drug money. Thanks Ronnie!
Asia Times Online

Drug smugglers call it the golden route: from Afghanistan into Pakistan and then into eastern Iran, it's the trail that takes Afghanistan's abundant opium, and its derivative, heroin, to Western markets.


And all along the way there is strong political compromise in which officials turn a blind eye to the players visibly plying the notorious route, and at each stage the commissions get bigger.

[...]
The route provides a funding lifeline for the Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, and also enriches not only the United States-friendly Afghan warlords but also elements of the Northern Alliance, the US's key ally in the country.


Afghanistan is estimated to produce 87% of the world's supply of opium (4,519 tons this season, down 2% from 2004 ), with nearly half of the country's US$4.5 billion economy coming from opium cultivation and trafficking.

[...]
Information obtained from the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington reveals trafficking groups based in Pakistan smuggling multi-ton shipments of drugs to Europe and the US.


These regional drug traffickers represent a diverse ethnic and tribal cross-section. Couriers take some of the drugs out of Pakistan through its international airports and the port of Karachi; the remainder goes overland along Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast to Iran and on to Turkey, or up into the Central Asian states.


The general route for smuggling Afghan-produced opiates from Pakistan goes overland from Pakistan's Balochistan province across the border into Iran, then passes through the northwestern region, which is inhabited by Kurds, and finally into laboratories in Turkey, where the opium is processed.


The shipments from Pakistan may be broken down into smaller shipments once in Iran. Iran is both a transit country and a destination for opium products. Iranian domestic production is believed to be quite low and unable to supply domestic demand. Opiates not intended for the Iranian market transit Iran to Turkey, where the morphine base is processed into heroin. Heroin and hashish are delivered to buyers located in Turkey, who then ship the drugs to the international market, primarily Europe. MORE