ISLAMABAD, 2 March 2005 — Opium poppy production has resurfaced in Pakistan because security forces have been busy tackling militants linked to the Al-Qaeda network along the Afghan border, a key official said yesterday.
Maj. Gen. Nadeem Ahmed, head of the Anti-Narcotics Force, warned yesterday Pakistan would be unable to combat narcotics flooding in from neighboring Afghanistan unless international assistance was increased.
Pakistan needed more international help if it was to win both the war on terror and the war on drugs, Ahmed told reporters at the launch of a report by the United Nations’ International Narcotics Control Board.
Ahmed said a coming shift in the drugs trade threatened to turn his country into a major production and refining center for opium and its derivatives heroin and morphine. “The question is if Pakistan is prepared to take that challenge. My answer is no. We are not prepared,” Ahmed told a news conference.
Ongoing counterterrorist operations in North West Frontier Province, as well as moves to tackle a tribal revolt in southwestern Balochistan province, had diverted key forces, he added.
“These two issues have hampered our efforts going for full eradication,” the anti-drugs chief said.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks Pakistan was faced with a new problem - hunting down scores of Al-Qaeda-linked militants believed to have sneaked out of Afghanistan following the fall of the Taleban in late 2001.
It pushed tens of thousands of regular troops into its lawless tribal areas as well as soldiers from the paramilitary Frontier Corps, catching some 700 foreign fighters, according to the government. This year the Frontier Corps has also been deployed to guard Pakistan’s largest gas field and other installations in restive Balochistan after attacks by tribesmen demanding economic benefits from the province’s natural resources.
“If the Frontier Corps is available in both these provinces and they are not committed to internal security tasks then hopefully we will be able to keep it (drugs) well under control,” Ahmed said.
Pakistan is one of the main transit routes used by drug traffickers from Afghanistan. But the intensification of efforts to counter narcotics production in Afghanistan, which has a near monopoly on supplies of heroin to the world, is likely to force production, of both crops and refined products, south of the border.
The main areas of activity are in the restive tribal belt that straddles Pakistan’s western border with Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s Army and paramilitary frontier scouts are hunting Al-Qaeda remnants and their supporters among local tribespeople in the region. This fight against militancy has meant fewer resources were available to fight drugs. Pakistani officials say about 70 percent of Afghanistan’s drugs are smuggled through Pakistan and Iran, while the rest goes north through Central Asia.
Opium cultivation reached record levels in Afghanistan last year, fuelling international fears that having ousted the Taleban militia protecting Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network in late 2001, the country now risked becoming a narco-mafia state.
Last year, the United States wised up to the threat and began backing a British-led campaign to roll back the drug menace.
Ahmed said the United States had promised to spend $780 million in Afghanistan on anti-drug activities, dwarfing the $2 million Pakistan receives from the international community.
The area under poppy, the flower that produces raw opium, was 130,000 hectares in Afghanistan last year, according to a UN study, whereas in Pakistan, it says there was just 6,700 hectares under poppy there.
Ahmed said his agency had managed to eradicate nearly 80 percent of the crop, but the remaining 20 percent was concentrated in tribal areas too risky to enter.
