Drugs in Teheran security vault

Corcoran: Deep beneath the streets of Iran's capital, Teheran, we were being guided to a bunker. It was November last year, and the Iranian authorities wanted us to see something extraordinary.

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For in this vault was evidence of Afghanistan's most insidious export after terrorism.

Man: Heroin … two tonnes

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Woman: Two tons.

Corcoran: Two tons of heroin. And how many tons of opium?… 115 tons of opium.

Man: And Morphine … less than 20 tonnes of morphine.

Corcoran: Under the Taliban, Afghanistan was producing nearly 80 percent of all the world's opium and its more valuable derivative, heroin. It was a major source of income for the regime.

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The only problem was Iran, sitting astride the main trafficking pipeline to Europe. Even with their fierce anti-drugs policies, the Iranians were, at best, seizing only five percent of shipments.

Kabul

Corcoran: Since seizing the capital, Kabul, in 1996, the Taliban had repeatedly refused to acknowledge their complicity in the drugs trade.

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Taliban raid on drugs

They would periodically stage these sham raids, seizing heroin and declaring opium production to be unIslamic. But then early this year, an unexpected development. Supreme leader Omar* had ordered an immediate halt to opium cultivation. By January, the poppy fields had disappeared.

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Maley

Super:

Dr. William Maley

South Asia security specialist

Maley: I think the enforcement of the last decree on opium was designed to try to win them some favour in the international community at a time when the Taliban were increasingly isolated internationally.

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Streets of Kabul

Corcoran: But as a goodwill gesture, the ban failed. The west was not prepared to overlook the Taliban's repression, or continued sponsorship of terrorist groups.

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Now amid the chaos on the Afghan-Pakistan frontier, it appears the Taliban have revoked the bank. Reports have emerged of a dramatic collapse in the price of opium. A strong indicator that the Taliban may be about to flood the world market.

Frahi

Super:

Bernard Frahi

U.N Drug Control, Pakistan

Frahi: We have seen recently, over the last two weeks, a drop in the prices **. Before the crisis, one kilo of opium was sold in * to buy roughly 500, 600 dollars a kilo. Two weeks ago, just a couple of days after the crisis, the price fell down to about 300 dollars, and now it's about 100, 150 dollars a kilo.

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Opium plantation

Corcoran: For decades, opium had bankrolled Afghanistan's various warring factions. But it was under the Taliban that this home grown industry came close to cornering the world market. So vast was production that when Mullah Omar imposed the ban, the United Nations estimated that three year's supply had been stockpiled, a kind of Taliban gold reserve that may now be cashed in.

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Maley

Maley: It would be prudent from the Taliban's point of view to try to dispose of a crop on the old kind of use it or lose it basis. If the Americans know where the crops are, they would be an obvious target. The estimate of the British is the twenty billion pounds worth of opium has been stockpiled in different parts of the country, and one of the great fears at the moment is that the Taliban, in order to obtain ready cash will try to sell as much of the stockpile as possible, irrespective of what the market price is as the time.

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Iranian military

Corcoran: To the west, on the Iran-Afghan border, the Iranians are now bracing themselves for what may follow. Along the entire 1,000 kilometre frontier, they've constructed trenches, walls and fences, a defensive network in what has been a costly drug war.

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Mazzitelli

Super:

Antonio Mazzitelli

U.N Drug Control, Iran

Mazzitelli: It's a war, definitely it's a war. Traffickers, moreover, sometimes are better equipped than the Iranians.

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Iranian military

Corcoran: It took us a year to gain access to this highly sensitive area, to a war the Iranians were already losing.

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Iranian commanders told us of their helicopters being shot down by Afghans wielding stinger missiles. Of entire detachments of heavily armed Iranian troops, wiped out in battles. A sobering reminder of what the U.S. led coalition may yet face.

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Mazzitelli

Mazzitelli: Last year, 170 soldiers were killed during shoot out with traffickers. I doubt that any western law enforcement authority has paid such a high price to the fight against drugs.

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Iranian Border patrol

Corcoran: The problem for the Iranians is compounded by a nightly parade of human misery that helps mask trafficker movements. Even before the latest crisis, thousands of Afghans were slipping across the still porous border each night, fleeing the worst drought in living memory.

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Patrolman: Why have you come to Iran?

Man: We came here because we are hungry and thirsty.

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Patrolman : Like these people, these illegal Afghans at the border, they are used by drug traffickers to carry narcotics in packs on their backs. And they go on foot in the mountainous area and bring the drugs from the other side of border from Afghanistan or Pakistan into Iran.

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Patrolman: These are Afghanis.

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Corcoran: Packed into this small car, 17 emaciated members of a single family with barely the strength to move. Last year, this single roadblock was apprehending a thousand people a week. Now millions of Afghans are reportedly on the move, towards Iran and Pakistan.

Concealed in the long line of refugees, the professional drug couriers. Barely one in 20 gets caught. UN drug control officials in Iran say it will be weeks before they get a clear picture of the expected surge in trafficking. Such is the Iranian obsession with secrecy on this life and death frontier.

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This man caught with 12 kilos of heroin was later sentenced to death. Just one of 200 captured drug runners the Iranians execute each year.

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Patrolman: Absolutely he will be executed.

Corcoran: There's no doubt about that. He's facing execution.

Patrolman: Absolutely.

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Maley

Maley: The risk of the opium stock being flooded into the market to the detriment of the wellbeing of young people in western countries provides an additional reason for the major powers to think very seriously about action to overthrow the Taliban.

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Afghani streets

Music

Corcoran: It will take weeks for the expected drug surge to hit the lucrative markets of western Europe. But the impact on Afghanistan's neighbours will be immediate. The Taliban were happy to fuel the drug trade, because they claimed it only harmed the decadent west. But here on the streets of Iran, there are two million addicts. Even more in Pakistan, all of them fellow Muslims.

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Homeless man: For God’s sake – I beg you stop these sellers – these drug pushers.

Corcoran: Now Afghan heroin courses through their veins. Their misery fuelled by a Taliban movement that claims to champion Islam in its purest form.

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Credits:

Taliban Drugs:

Reporter: Mark Corcoran

Camera: Geoff Clegg, Bernie Cavanagh

Sound: Kate Graham

Gep Bartlett

Editor: Garth Thomas

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