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Corcoran: A waxing moon rises over the Golden Crescent. This is Iran’s frontier with Afghanistan. And across 1,000 kilometres of desert and mountain, Iranian paramilitary police wait for sunset. They’re fighting an escalating drug war to close what is now the major heroin pipeline to the west.

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MAZZITELLI: Is a war, definitely is a war – traffickers moreover, sometimes are better equipped than the Iranians.

COLONEL: If these defences did not exist – You couldn’t imagine the situation of the European people in terms of drugs and addiction.

Corcoran: After dusk, a patrol moves out for another dangerous night on the roadblocks.

MAZZITELLI: Iran has over 30,000 men on its border. 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 drug.

Corcoran: A staggering 80 percent of all the world’s opium and heroin is now produced just over the border in Afghanistan.

MAZZITELLI: Last year Iran seized something like 220 tonnes of opium. Once more last year 6 tonne of heroin.

Corcoran: The hauls are massive – but account for barely one twentieth of Afghan drug production – which continues to pour across the border unabated.

The driver of this Mercedes arouses suspicion. He’s an ethnic Kurd from the border region with Turkey – the next link in the international trafficking chain.

FAYEQ SHAAFI: There’s nothing! I know nothing about these! I don’t know whose they are – I had no knowledge – I don’t know!

Corcoran: Expert eyes quickly locate one-kilo bags of heroin, concealed in the roof of the car. Twelve kilos in all.It’s all over for Fayeq Shaafi, a 37-year old motor mechanic. His fast track to riches now transformed into a slow march to the gallows.

FAYEQ SHAAFI: I’ve made a mistake – and I am now trying to find a way to save myself.

Corcoran: Confession now his only chance of escaping the hangman’s noose.

Interpreter: And your job now was to drive the drugs all the way up to the Iran/Turkey border?

SHAAFI: Yes.

Corcoran: Fayeq paid $11,000 U.S. dollars for the drugs. If he’d made it to Turkey he’d have sold the shipment for eight times that amount. On the streets of Europe this lot would fetch $1.2 million dollars. Despite the haul, police are fighting a losing battle – and they know it. And Fayeq now knows he will lose his life.

Officer: Absolutely , he will be executed.

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

Officer: Absolutely.


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Corcoran: The ancient Silk Road -- for centuries a well-worn path of riches from the Orient to Europe. The land of death, traders once called this lunar landscape.

Now once again, it is living up to its reputation.
In this proxy war against Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, for whom opium and heroin are the key source of income.

The Iranians have spent a billion dollars constructing a vast network of trenches, walls and fences along the entire frontier -- a 21st century Iron Curtain.

Hundreds of mini-forts dot the landscape - more reminiscent of the Middle Ages than a modern Narco war. Everyone, and seemingly everything, is suspect -- even the camels.

COLONEL: They’ve addicted the camels to drugs and taken them back and forth along the route a few times. They use this method so the camels carry the drugs to the next destination.

UPSOT FIRING

Corcoran: By day the Iranians rehearse ambush drills for this largely nocturnal confrontation. These young police conscripts need all the practice they can get. They’re often out-gunned by traffickers - equipped with the most sophisticated weapons drug money can buy -- including Stinger missiles that shoot down Iranian helicopters.
The Iranians lost 170 men in shootouts last year - but they also killed more than 700 traffickers in the process.

COLONEL: This is our mission, by order of our Great Leader- we are safeguarding all humanity – not just our own nation.

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Corcoran: They’re also safeguarding us. At all times we’re escorted by six heavily armed bodyguards – as kidnapping is a common trafficker tactic to extort money. More than 100 Iranians are currently held hostage in Afghanistan.
Portraits of martyred police – welcome us to the provincial capital Zahedan. This is a city of ethnic Baluchis with strong tribal links in the Pakistan and Afghan mountains beyond. For these people, smuggling is a traditional way of life. Fiercely independent, they regard the Iranian authorities as an occupying force – interfering in their business – the business of drug trafficking.

UPSOT KORANIC CHANTING
Corcoran: A large number of Baluchi’s and Afghans end up here - Zahedan prison. Iran now has 85,000 drug traffickers behind bars.

Rarely, do they permit foreigners to inspect their jails – but today we get the VIP treatment. By Iranian standards, Zahedan jail has a five star rating – part of an official attempt to placate the locals.

Many prisoners are also addicts -but there’s no methadone program – just the Koran and the eternal quest for Allah’s guiding hand.

PRISON GOVERNOR: Those who believe in the Koran don’t commit crime – and if there is a mistake in their lives, they use the Koran to rectify their shortcomings.

Corcoran: It’s a view contradicted by the man who runs Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters. General Mohammed Fallah says prisons simply serve as recruitment centres for the syndicates.

GENERAL FALLAH: We have more than eight thousand Afghans in our prisons due to the offences and crimes perpetrated by these Afghans, and their presence in Iranian prisons has created a sort of co-ordination between them and Iranian inmates and that has led to the formation of big criminal networks and gangs.

Corcoran: Zahedan jail also holds other foreigners from the third world – lured into trafficking by the promise of easy money.

Corcoran: Where are you from?

PRISONER: I’m from Tanzania he’s from Mozambique

Corcoran: Why are you in jail?

INTERPRETER: He have a problem - he was arrested with one kilo of marijuana.

I know him - he has been deceived into carrying narcotic - they had said in Pakistan - these are hashish and take them to Africa and you will be paid 2,000 toman, but in fact the content of the capsules he swallowed was heroin. One kilo and two hundred grams he swallowed. He was arrested in hotel.

Corcoran: Despite the vast sums of narco-dollars washing through Iran, the authorities insist there’s no institutionalised corruption – such is the discipline of the Islamic State. But in reality traffickers couldn’t operate without inside help. Our escorts are angered when one prisoner reveals that he was an army officer who’d been serving on the border.

FORMER OFFICER: I was carrying 12 kilograms of opium in my vehicle and my vehicle was confiscated. I was convicted for five years imprisonment and I paid six million toman ($A 12,000) cash penalty.

Corcoran: Why were you carrying opium?

FORMER OFFICER: I was paid low salary, financial problems… so I did it.

Corcoran: He could have been executed along with most of the prison population. Death is mandatory for those caught with more than more than 30 grams of heroin or five kilos of opium. But in reality, execution is reserved for repeat offenders and big time smugglers.

GENERAL FALLAH: Capital punishment is largely considered a propaganda tool. Still, we have two hundred cases of execution annually.

Corcoran: We are summoned to the Revolutionary Courts Complex – there’s something the Drugs police want us to see.
We’re led inside the compound – then deep underground to a bunker – where a judge orders the doors of a giant vault to be opened.

There’s surprisingly little security considering what lies inside, for this is the Aladdin’s Cave of narcotics - The Central Drugs Storage of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
?: Heroin. 2 tonnes.

Corcoran: Two tonnes of heroin, and how many tonnes of opium??

: 115 tonnes of opium.

Corcoran: 115 tonnes of opium!?

: And morphine.

And less than twenty tonnes of morphine?

We transfer this morphine and opium to different factories to make medicine.

Corcoran: The heroin and hashish is routinely incinerated in public ceremonies – hundreds of millions of dollars worth literally up in smoke.

Corcoran: If you were to put all this in trucks and take it to the streets of Western Europe, what would this fetch, on the street, in US dollars? ?: We don’t sell - we don’t know. [laughs]

Corcoran: But the figures are easy. According to U.N. estimates, this lot would fetch more than 2.2 billion U.S. dollars.

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Corcoran: Back at the border – there’s another major problem for the Iranians – a nightly parade of human misery that makes the traffickers' work infinitely easier.
Thousands of Afghan refugees – fleeing a nation destroyed by two decades of war, and now in the grip of the worst drought in 30 years.

OFFICER: Why have you come to Iran?REFUGEE: We came here because we are hungry and thirsty.
Corcoran: Opium poppy production has also been hard hit. But the Iranians say trafficking continues unabated as the Taliban have already warehoused two year’s supply.

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

These are Afghanis.

Corcoran: Packed into this small car, seventeen emaciated members of a single family – with barely the strength to move. This one roadblock alone apprehends a thousand people a week. There are now more than one and a half million Afghans in Iran.

OFFICER: How did you come to Iran ?

REFUGEE: We crossed the border on foot and were picked up by the car.

Corcoran: Despite fierce opposition to the Taliban – the Iranians have long displayed compassion to those who flee - but patience is now wearing thin.

Refugees are blamed for the drugs, for taking Iranian jobs and triggering massive unemployment. 200,000 were paid to go home last year – but many later returned as illegals.

Corcoran: What will happen to all the Afghans?

POLICEMAN: They are sent to camps then sent to the border and deported.

Corcoran: Then they will come back again?

POLICEMAN: Yes – it’s a round circle.

Corcoran: Now there are calls from within the Iranian leadership to forcibly deport the rest and seal the border. Iranian police say the same gangs smuggle both drugs and people. And warn that if Iran shuts the door, the refugees and drugs will simply go elsewhere.

GENERAL FALLAH: In many instances people smuggling takes place in order to create a smuggling network – they take people to other countries under the pretext of employment – but the aim is to create smuggling networks for drugs, weapons, the like.

Corcoran: Antonio Mazzitelli is a narcotics expert with the U.N. Drug Control Program in Iran. He warns that Afghan heroin is finding new markets in Asia – a region that until now has been dominated by Burma’s Golden Triangle.

Corcoran: Is there a connection between the heroin smuggling, trafficking and people smuggling

MAZZITELLI: Well, you have touched a very sensitive point. As far as South East Asia is concerned, for instance, there have been already reports of illegal immigrants stopping in Malaysia, Philippines and Australia. The same route that is used for illegal immigrants can be used for drugs, and as you say, sometimes illegal immigrants are forced by criminal organisations to become drug courier in order to pay for their trip.

Corcoran: And already the traffickers are changing tactics – going around rather the through the Iranian defences -- via central Asia to the north, or south into Pakistan and by boat through the Persian Gulf.To counter this, the Iranians want sophisticated surveillance equipment – banned under a technology embargo as Iran is still deemed a rogue state by the west.

MAZZITELLI: There are a number of political problems, they still make Iran as a country which stands on the borderline between an ally and an enemy. We hope that the situation will improve.

Corcoran: The Iranians are now unashamedly going the hard sell to impress the west. Zahedan regional commander, Hussein Salehi, has turned out his entire garrison to put the latest haul on display for us. A third of a ton of opium plus weapons. It’s a kind of walking tour through Iranian drug politics.

BRIG. HUSSEIN SALEHI: These people we fight are either hired by the Taliban or are attached to the Taliban.

Corcoran: The United States has been deeply impressed by this anti-narcotics offensive – there are even suggestions that Iran’s efforts may finally provide a bridge from pariah status back to western acceptance.

Already there are some new players in the sandpit.
The French are providing sniffer dogs – the British, flak jackets and information on trafficker movements.

Even Australia’s Federal Police have been involved – training Iranian drug officers at the Australian High Commission in Pakistan. But the Iranians say it’s not enough.

BRIG HUSSEIN SALEHI: So far there has not been much of an acknowledgment – of course there’s been some help through the United Nations to fight the drug smuggling – but not the way it should be.

Corcoran: The West’s reluctance to do more can be partly explained by the revolutionary rhetoric here on the walls of police headquarters. Iran’s calls for European and American help are still overshadowed by two decades of mistrust of the Great Satan.

Corcoran: And Israel and America are involved in the drugs?

BRIG HUSSEIN SALEHI : They have the same direction of Taliban.

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Corcoran: There’s also another explanation for this contradictory message. Iran is in the midst of a vicious power struggle between conservatives and reformists who want to loosen the grip of the ruling clerics.

As we film one of the huge concrete walls now blocking a border pass – it becomes clear that the security forces are also riven by these deep political divisions. Not everyone is happy with our presence in such a sensitive area.

Corcoran: What's the problem? Hey! hey! let it go!

Corcoran: We’re the guests of reformist-minded drugs police – but military intelligence officers are backing the conservatives, and they believe western reporting of the drug problem can only undermine the Islamic State.

Corcoran: Why have we been invited here if we can’t film? Why are we here if we're not allowed to film. We are a TV crew, you have invited us here.

Corcoran: The reformists regain control –and the officer is marched off. It’s just another day in the opaque world of Iranian politics.

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Corcoran: While the authorities are keen for us to witness their efforts in combating the international drugs trade, a far greater social crisis now looms within Iran itself. You’ve only got to spend a short time here on the streets of Tehran to appreciate that this is a nation awash in a sea of cheap drugs. More than two million addicts – that’s five percent of the adult population. According to the old communist dogma, religion was the opiate of the masses, but in the modern Islamic Republic of Iran, opiates have replaced religion, for an entire generation that lives without hope or happiness.

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Corcoran: Five minutes on a seemingly empty street – and dozens of addicts cautiously emerge from the shadows. Many barely out of their teens.

MAHMOUD: I am also addict, I also smoke heroin and my life is finished.

Corcoran: One of their leaders is Mahmoud, a former carpenter, disowned by his family, he now survives by scavenging for recyclable plastic.

MAHMOUD: I all the time crying, crying and say to God – What have I done – before you made me like that! I’m not living you know, I have died – nobody believe me, nobody support me.

Corcoran: What do the police do?MAHMOUD: The police just take some money from the seller and they are all free.

Corcoran: At this point local police arrive - tipped off we would later learn by a dealer angry that we are interrupting business We’re taken away for questioning – then released with a warning to stay away from the area.

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Corcoran: Daylight reveals a drug rehab clinic on the same street. For a lucky few these are the gates to possible salvation. But there are only three such clinics in all of Tehran – a city of 12 million people.

Those who front up are mainly middle class – still supported by families who’ve managed to keep their addiction off the streets. The patients here are invariably young – half Iran’s population is under 21.

MAZZITELLI: Drug abuse is produced by unemployment, which is a problem that is affecting the majority of youth in Iran, as well as also the frustration of the youth in not getting or aspiring to a Westernised culture or way of living which they cannot have in Iran.

Corcoran: For Aghil today is the last chance. AGHIL: I first tried it for fun with the guys- then a second time – it went from there

Corcoran: But the guys are long gone and his marriage is now over.

AGHIL: As soon as they know you’re an addict – gradually everyone turns away from you – no one wants to know you – they don’t care if you are dead or alive.

Corcoran: Aghil's estranged wife has returned today to help him through this appointment – a third and final attempt to kick what he calls his opium habit. Few here will openly admit to heroin addiction.

There’s a check up and an AIDS test – HIV rates are still remarkably low given widespread needle use -- though doctors say it’s only a matter of time before they face that spectre.

For now the biggest problem lies in convincing Iran’s leaders of the scale of this social crisis.

DOCTOR: It is a problem – we can’t deny it – denying it doesn’t solve the problem – a problem like this can exist in any society.

Corcoran: In the street outside the clinic lies Tehran’s forgotten class, oblivious to the passing world.

This is the real tragedy for Iran. While sacrificing young lives on the border, trying to stop the river of drugs to the west, they are, like an addict in denial – ignoring the far greater crisis that lies within.

JUNKIE: I am finished – only the winter of my life is left – but our future young the 16, 14, 12 year olds they are tied up in this.

Corcoran: Here for all to see are the forgotten victims of an ignored war.

JUNKIE: For God sake – I beg you stop these sellers – these drug pushers.Corcoran: Afghan heroin coursing through their veins - they are, in their own words, already dead.
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Reporter/Producer : Mark Corcoran
Camera Geoff Clegg
Sound: Kate Graham
Editor: Garth Thomas
Research: Vivien Altman