Inside the Afghan drug trade

Ahmed Noor

"Ahmed Noor" is the police commander of a market town along the Afghan-Tajik border in Takhar Province. In the tape, Mr. Noor admits that he's involved in drug trafficking, and gives an up-to-date breakdown of how much profit corrupt police officials make per kilo in the drug trade. But Noor notes with chagrin that other, more powerful commanders are making much more money than he is.

UP IN SMOKE: Tajik policemen burned drugs that they seized in Dushanbe last year. NOZIM KALANDAROV/REUTERS/FILE

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Mentioning one police commander by name, Noor says, "[He] is not happy with $20,000 a night from drug money," he says. "He charged $40 per kilo to transport it to the other side of the border. [He] himself is at home, resting and watching movies, and he plays cards with friends."

This commander moves more than 600 kilos every night, and at $40 a kilo, that's a hefty profit, Noor says. "Believe me, I know he did this six times a week."

But while big players like this commander are able to move large quantities of heroin through Takhar Province, and even through Noor's own district, Noor says that this powerful commander won't share this business with other commanders.

Once, Noor says, this commander warned Noor to stop trafficking in drugs. Noor refused. So the commander started setting up checkpoints to try to catch Noor in the act of smuggling. At one such checkpoint, Noor was driving the car himself, and rather than stop at the checkpoint, he floored the accelerator and attempted to run over an armed soldier blocking the road.

"I had 500 kilos of drugs with me, and I was not going to give up that easily," he says. "So I drove fast to run over the soldier. The soldier runs away and shoots in the air. After I unloaded the car at the border, I came back to the commander of the checkpoint, and asked him why his soldier wanted to stop me. [The checkpoint commander] told me it was the order of [the top commander]. So I warned [the checkpoint commander] and told him that the drug money goes to [the commander's] pocket, but why he is stopping other people's cars. I told him, 'the next time you try to stop me, I will shoot your head to pieces with bullets.' "

Noor admits that the drug business is getting more difficult, and his business partners are becoming less trustworthy. "One day, I took 60 kilos of drugs to the other side of the border to Dushanbe, but the Tajik smuggler took it and did not pay me," he says. "No one can do anything to Tajik smugglers on their soil."

Noor blames the incident on his own sense of trust. "I believed one of my Afghan friends, who told me that this Tajik guy pays better than the others. I believed him."

Commander Bilal

"Commander Bilal" is a senior administrator in the provincial Takhar police force, and a former police commander of a border district along the Tajik border. In his tape, Bilal complains that police discipline is breaking down, and the trafficking has become so fractured that even low-level cops are starting to skim profits. More important, he reveals that drug corruption has infiltrated deep within the Ministry of Interior, the chief law- enforcement organization, as top officials take bribes to appoint corrupt drug dealers into top police positions.

On paper, Bilal is one of the most powerful police commanders in his province, with many district commanders under him. But in reality, with district commanders deeply involved in the drug trade, few of the police officials in Takhar pay attention to him. Things were better, Bilal says, when he was a district police commander.

But even then, it wasn't so good. As a trafficking point, his border town was highly overrated.

"What have they seen [about that town]?" he asks. "There is only one bridge, and anyone you send - even your brother - will not bring any smuggler to you. If some one is caught there and brought to me, I will get $10,000 from him [in bribes]. But that poor soldier standing there will accept $200 from the smuggler [to let him pass through] instead of bringing him to me. I can't stand there myself on the bridge, because it is shameful."

In any case, Bilal says his relations with the drug smugglers was never very warm. "I don't know why, but the smugglers did not trust us," says Bilal.

He thinks for a moment, and then continues. One of his colleagues in the police department in the border town, "was playing games with the smugglers. [This commander] is the kind of person who cut a deal with smugglers, takes money from them, and further on up the road, stops and seizes their drugs, too. That was the reason the smugglers did not trust us. "

Bilal says almost all the police commanders in Takhar have paid officials at the Ministry of Interior to get their jobs, and nowadays, commanders have to pay increasing amounts just to keep their jobs.

"Every three months the commanders are pushed a little bit or they are told that they may be replaced. Then everybody rushes toward the ministry with $10,000."

But Bilal says he likes his job. It's not the responsibilities that he likes the most, though. It's the access to the drug trade. "It is a good position," he says. "I pay $1,000 and get $20,000 in profit."

"It has some advantages," he says.

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