AFGHANISTAN:DRUG BOSSES in Afghanistan, where poppy growing has soared in spite of the billions that western powers have spent in trying to stamp it out, have started to recruit foreign chemists to help turn raw opium into highly refined heroin, the United Nations warned yesterday.
Most of the chemists come from Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, the UN says, and are going to some of Afghanistan's most troubled areas to oversee the mixing of poppy resin with smuggled industrial chemicals to produce heroin of the highest quality.
Christina Orguz, Afghanistan country director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said Afghanistan's drug bosses were behaving like businessmen and recruiting the best people available. Afghanistan now supplies more than 90 per cent of the world's heroin.
Last year, an estimated 60 per cent of Afghanistan's poppy harvest was processed into heroin inside the country, but until now it was not known that foreign chemists were helping produce such high-grade forms of the drug.
Widespread lawlessness in the south and east of the war-wracked country allows illegal drugs laboratories to operate with virtual impunity.
However, the process requires vast quantities of chemicals to be smuggled into the country. The UN estimates some 13,000 tons of chemicals were required last year.
The most important chemical, acetic anhydride, is used in many legal industries, including paints and pharmaceuticals, and much of the material that finds its way to Afghanistan is made by blue-chip companies in Europe, South Korea and Russia.
But an international control system designed to prevent the chemicals from being misused is unable to prevent it being obtained in Pakistan, where criminal gangs use front companies to get hold of the chemical.
However, the battle against Afghanistan's drug bosses has been hindered by endemic corruption and the weakness of Hamid Karzai's government.
"Afghanistan has not had a well-trained police force for many, many years," Ms Orguz said. "They are taking baby steps now." - (Financial Times service)