By Joseph Limprecht. Mr. Limprecht was counselor for Narcotics Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad 1988-91. He is currently deputy director of the Office of Israel and Arab-Israeli Affairs, Bureau of Near East and South Asian Affairs. The opinions expressed are the author's and not those of The Department of State.

Arriving in Islamabad to take over the Narcotics Affairs Section (NAS), I found myself working in one of the roughest and most remote frontier areas in the world. As long as anyone can remember, opium has been a traditional cash crop for the fiercely independent, Pushtu-speaking Pathan tribesmen of eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP). To travel among the Pathans is to begin to know one of the most interesting traditional cultures left on earth. These people have demonstrated their toughness and resilience in years of warfare against the British and the Soviets, and in continual feuding among themselves. They are among the most hospitable people in the world--people who will offer a visitor everything they have--but they are also among the most warlike.

On one excursion to Mohmand Agency, a tribal area north of Peshawar, a Pakistani official responsible for maintaining some semblance of law and order among the Pathan tribes told me how, two weeks earlier, he had talked a tribesman out of an armored personnel carrier. The tribesman, who had been driving the APC down the main road, had stolen it from his rebel commander in Afghanistan, driven it over the pass into Mohmand Agency, and planned to sell it in the local arms bazaar. There he would have found a ready market for it, since Mohmand people love weapons above all else.

That point was underscored when the official and I pulled into the fortress compound of a key tribal chief. At least 100 of his fellow tribesmen greeted us, 10 of them firing AK-47s in a traditional Pathan greeting, emptying their clips into the air. Then one of the chief's men opened fire with the chief's very own anti-aircraft artillery piece, blasting away at the nearest mountainside until he had finished off a whole belt of ammo. I asked later what use the chief could possibly have for a towed anti-aircraft gun. For artillery fire against enemy local clans, I was told. I knew then what we were up against.

Epidemic

The narcotics problem is an extremely difficult one in Pakistan. The country has supplied upwards of 40 percent of the heroin consumed in the United States in recent years. Right now, the figure is somewhat lower, since the better-organized, Chinese-run Southeast Asian trafficking organizations have taken over a larger share of the business. Most of Europe's heroin, however, still comes from Pakistan. But the bulk of the heroin produced in Pakistan stays right there--Pakistan now has somewhere between 1 and 2 million heroin addicts--more than twice as many as the United States. According to one recent estimate, one in nine males between 15 and 30 in Karachi is addicted to heroin. And this is a recent phenomenon--12 years ago Pakistan had no heroin addicts.

Agriculture has always been relatively marginal in many parts of the NWFP, but opium has thrived. For decades opium was grown and harvested there, then transported by caravan across Afghanistan and Iran to heroin refining labs in France, Sicily, and Eastern Turkey. But police crackdowns in the West and in Turkey in the 1970s, Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the same time disrupted this trade.

The drug financiers in the West and Middle East responded by teaming up with smart, tough Pathan operators to set up simple heroin production laboratories in the semi-autonomous Tribal Areas along the border between the NWFP and Afghanistan. Within 35-40 miles of Peshawar, the ancient trading center on the Pakistan side of the Khyber Pass, Pathan tribesmen still live, free of almost all interference from the government of Pakistan and operating under the protection of both vague tradition and genuine 100-year-old treaties dating from British days. Western drug enforcement authorities estimate that, at any given time, more than 100 labs are functioning free of government enforcement in these "politically inaccessible" areas (tribal areas where Pakistan government officials have no authority and may enter only with tribal permission). These labs process the opium grown in the NWFP and across the border in Afghanistan.

The U.S. role

U.S. counter narcotics programs now account for more than $150-million per year in assistance to other countries (this is distinct from A.I.D.-funded programs such as the Gadoon-Amizai Project in Pakistan). These programs are administered by the Bureau of International Narcotics Matters (INM) headed by an assistant secretary, who is responsible for all U.S. counter- narcotics policy beyond the borders of the United States. While the bulk of these expenditures go to the large programs in the Andean coca-producing countries--Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia--there have been programs in the Asian heroin-producing countries since the 1970s. Today there are significant programs in Pakistan and Thailand, each under the direction of the ambassador coordinating the work of the Drug Enforcement Administration, A.I.D., and the State Bureau of International Narcotics Matters.

INM's Pakistan program is funded at about $5-7 million per year. While far smaller than programs in Latin America, it is one of the broadest and most extensive programs anywhere. More than half of the funds go to the crop control program-rural development programs that are designed to bring development to remote, opium-growing areas, provide alternative cash crops to opium farmers, and help the government of Pakistan open up hitherto "inaccessible" areas to enforcement of the ban on opium cultivation. There is equipment and training for law enforcement agencies charged with drug enforcement. Finally, there is a relatively small demand-reduction program, designed to help Pakistan combat its growing addiction problem.

Each of these projects is designed specifically to further U.S. counter-narcotics objectives in Pakistan:

-- to reduce opium cultivation in the NWFP;

-- to induce the government of Pakistan to arrest, prosecute, convict and imprison major drug traffickers;

-- to shut down heroin production labs and bring their operators to justice; and

-- to extradite from Pakistan alleged traffickers indicted in U.S. courts.

The crop control program is managed from the Narcotics Affairs Section's Peshawar satellite office, headed by a retired A.I.D. officer with nearly three decades of experience in the rural areas of Asia. He is assisted by two Pakistani engineers and two agricultural specialists. Its efforts are currently focused on Bajaur and Mohmand Agencies, semi-autonomous tribal areas northwest of Peshawar on the Afghan borders where, along with nearby Dir District (where there is a similar U.N.-sponsored project), more than 75 percent of the opium poppy grown in Pakistan is cultivated.

The embassy's counter narcotics policy is that INM money must be spent in a clearly focused manner to ensure that U.S. counter-narcotics goals are met. Thus, the crop control program is principally directed toward road building in the tribal areas. Once a road is built into a hitherto inaccessible, poppy-growing valley, government of Pakistan authorities are at least theoretically able to patrol and enforce the ban on opium cultivation.

Warrior culture

It sounds simple, but it is not always easy. In one confrontation a few years ago (fictionalized effectively in the British television series "Traffic"), nearly a dozen farmers were killed trying to defend their poppy crops against government paramilitary forces.

The tribesmen do not easily accept central government authority. After all, they fought the British to a standstill for decades (skirmishes were still fought against the Mahsuds of South Waziristan as World War II began). Today, in the wake of the Afghan war, they are better armed than ever. Every male has an AK-47 (women count for very little in this extreme example of a warrior culture; in fact, they are seldom ever seen), and automatic weapons are openly carried on the roads and in the villages. One can see men walking down the road with rocket launchers on their shoulders--for use against their clan enemies. And any tribal chief worth his salt has his own Soviet-made 14.5-mm towed anti-aircraft gun. Rockets, missiles, grenade launchers, mortars--all are available in the local markets. And they are not for show. The martial Pathan culture demands that they be used--in feuds, in routine highway lawlessness, or just for show.

Nevertheless, word of the benefits offered by NAS projects--good roads, drinking water projects, improved agriculture, jobs--filters out into even the most remote valleys and is not without its attraction for these fiercely independent people. The Peshawar-based project engineers--both native Pushtu speakers--traveled regularly off the roads into the far-flung back country and met the people. The people are not always friendly, and their experiences are sometimes a bit frightening (like the time their jeep was surrounded by 35 unsmiling, heavily armed tribesmen who wanted an explanation for their presence in this "closed" valley). Fortunately, more wanted NAS's projects than didn't. The crop-control program is moving forward, and the areas where opium is grown are shrinking year by year.

The enforcers

The law enforcement project has been harder to get started. Corruption remains a problem in all South Asian police forces--the average policeman in Pakistan earns less than $40 per month--and years of martial rule by the army under former President Zia left the police a second class force, underequipped and plagued by poor morale. Investigative techniques are at best fledgling. DEA's 15 agents stationed at the embassy and in Lahore, Karachi, and Peshawar are charged with working directly with the Pakistani police agencies, not only to make their own cases, but also to train the local agencies to upgrade their enforcement capabilities.

There have been improvements during the past year, as Pakistan's para-military border forces, particularly the legendary Frontier Corps along the Afghan border, under instructions from the prime minister, have taken a new interest in going after drug smugglers. INM's response has been to work hand-in-glove with the DEA to assist the para-military organizations. The NAS has the money to provide the equipment and training that is needed. DEA has the man-power and expertise to name the organizations best able to make use of assistance, and to work closely with them to ensure that the assistance is effectively used. Under the leadership of the ambassador and the DEA Country attache, State-DEA cooperation began to bear fruit in late 1990 after the Frontier Corps in Balochistan seized 1,741 kilograms of heroin--apparently the largest heroin seizure ever--following an all-night gun battle with an encampment of heavily armed smugglers near the Afghan border southwest of Quetta. The smugglers escaped--they outgunned even the Frontier Corps with an anti-aircraft artillery piece roped to the bed of a pickup truck--but they left their dope behind.

Not all law-enforcement projects are immediate successes. For example, it has taken more than two years to get the federal anti-narcotics elite investigative unit established. Other non-functioning past projects have led to the shut-off of assistance by the embassy. But the apparent commitment of Nawaz Sharif's government to genuine enforcement lends hope for their future.

Saying no

The third and smallest project area, demand reduction, focused originally on funding seminars and media campaigns to help persuade Pakistanis, especially the elite, that narcotics really is Pakistan's own problem, not just one for the West. Cheap, readily available heroin is ruining thousands of lives in Pakistan. An addict can feed his habit for under $2 a day in Pakistan, where heroin is cooked on a piece of tinfoil and the fumes inhaled (it's called "chasing the dragon") rather than injected. Pakistan's leaders are beginning to recognize the extent of the heroin problem. Consequently, the focus of NAS's demand-reduction program has shifted to funding community-level outreach projects and teacher education. In these projects, NAS has worked very closely with the UN Drug Control Program (UNDCP). In one unique project, the embassy NAS is funding a program that was developed and is managed by the UNDCP. This cooperation was put together and implemented at the local level.

As long as there is a demand for drugs, people will find a way to make money supplying them. There are no silver bullets in Pakistan, just as none have been found in the United States. There have been disappointments with U.S.-funded programs in the past and there will be more in the future. But the embassy, DEA, and INM are strongly motivated to persevere. The effort is worth continuing.