Opium (50 page)

If these republics do start large-scale opium production, much will enter the illicit world market, for Afghanistan heroin travels through the region where local clans and criminal groups are already fighting to control the routes. Central Asian republics also produce large quantities of cannabis which is already smuggled to the West: heroin could easily join this less pernicious drug. In the days of the French Connection, it was Armenian nationals who facilitated the purchase of morphine base from Turkey. They were close at hand for Armenia lies on the borders of Turkey and Iran. Today, Armenians continue to broker and transport morphine and heroin originating in the Middle East and the Golden Crescent out to the West. Morphine base is sent to refineries in Lebanon with heroin going to Turkey and on to the rest of Europe. Within Armenian society, Mafia-style practices have become institutionalised with nationalist fighters using drugs as a finance source. Pessimistic – but realistic – Western intelligence agencies sardonically call all of this region the ‘New Colombia.'

During the decades of Communism, whilst alcoholism was of serious social concern in the USSR, drug addiction was not such a problem but now opiate abuse, especially heroin, is on the increase, particularly in Russia where there is a growing problem amongst young adults and in the lower ranks of the armed forces. A massacre in Chechnya in 1995 was reportedly committed by Russian troops high on drugs.

In Russia as elsewhere in the CIS, Mafia-style gangs are proliferating and exploiting economic and social instabilities. These hoodlums, commonly referred to as the ‘Russian Mafia', mostly exist in ethnically orientated groups dating back to the last century when they operated as either bandit gangs or politically motivated anti-Tsarist partisans. Today, they contain not only hardened criminals but substantial elements of the former KGB, men with expert knowledge of undercover and underworld operations who have turned from being secret policemen into secretive, ruthless and highly organised national and international mobsters.

The hard-core of these gangsters emanate from Chechnya and it is said that as Sicily is to Italy so Chechnya is to the CIS. There is a rumour circulating amongst international drug enforcement officers to the effect that the UN have avoided becoming involved in a humanitarian role in the Chechnya conflict because there is tacit agreement not to criticise Russian military behaviour there because the conflict affords a fine opportunity to hit at the heart of CIS gangsterism.

With links to heroin producers and organised crime in Europe and the USA, these Russian gangs deal in narcotics, distributing throughout Europe and exporting heroin from South-east Asia to North America, using increased tourism and the post-Communist relaxation of travel rules as cover. At their present rate of expansion, Russian gangsters are anticipated to become one of the world's leading drug (and weapons) suppliers by the year 2000, if not before.

Gangsters are not solely involved for heroin in former Eastern bloc countries is not just made in criminal-owned factories. Some pharmaceutical companies, bereft of state subsidies and facing the open market with inefficient or out-dated factories, are thought to have begun their own heroin production.

The political liberation of Eastern Europe, the restructuring of police and security services and political turmoil in the region has been a boon to ethnic organised crime groups who are developing new routes between the old East and the West. It is thought they are encouraging poppy growing in areas such as the Elbasan province of Albania. Indeed, Albanians are following the example of their Bulgarian neighbours, generating foreign currency by transporting heroin through their country whilst also buying morphine base from Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and Turkey and manufacturing heroin in Albania. They also traded arms and fuel to the protagonists in the Yugoslavian civil war, investing the profits in drugs. In the former Yugoslavia, where poppies used to be farmed under licence, warring factions were preparing to use opium as a means of financing their struggles but the conflict ended before the means of income was developed. This is not to say opium may not appear in the future as a source of finance in the war-torn countryside and it follows, as other states slide toward separatism, they too may turn to narcotics for funding. In neighbouring Macedonia, an opium producer in the 1920s and 1930s, poppy cultivation is once more prevalent with heroin laboratories appearing to process the harvest.

Not only post-Communist ethnic nationalist movements deal in drugs in Europe. The Basque separatists (ETA) in Spain, the IRA and Loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland have all claimed to be engaged in political wars but they have all used drug dealing to finance arms purchases. The IRA have known links to Irish-American gangs and have worked in collaboration with them in drug dealing and other rackets whilst Loyalist units have gained funds from drug dealing despite their quasi-social role as moralists who knee-cap or kill members of their community who are involved in peddling.

The Turkish ban of 1972 ended that country's role as a major opium source but it has since played upon its geographical position to become an important processing and transit centre for Golden Crescent products. Heroin refineries near Istanbul and in south-eastern Turkey receive morphine base from Afghanistan by truck via Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia, about 65 per cent of the heroin being re-exported by road to Europe, much of it in bonded trucks covered by Transport International Routier (TIR) regulations and not subjected to customs inspection. The TIR system is an international agreement, the signatories to which ease cross-border transportation by removing as much bureaucracy as possible. Once vehicles have been cleared by customs at the start of a journey, they are not inspected again until reaching their destination. This plays into traffickers' hands, especially if the journey commences where controls are lax or officials corrupt.

The trail taken from Turkey is called the Balkan Route which goes to Western Europe by way of Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and the Czech and Slovak Republics. A southern leg goes through Cyprus (where heroin is also refined), Greece and Albania, thence by sea to Italy from the ports of Durres and Vlore: the seepage of heroin across the Adriatic is extensive. More than 75 per cent of heroin seized in Europe comes along the Balkan Route which is dominated by Turkish and Turkish Cypriot traffickers in league with criminal gangs based in Sofia, Tirana and Bucharest where law and order has broken down.

Italy, Germany and Spain each have an addict population of over 100,000, a per capita rate higher than the USA. In Italy, despite recent successful law enforcement initiatives against them, the Mafia is still active but their involvement in narcotics is reduced, at least as far as the Sicilians are concerned. Other criminal syndicate groups, especially the Calabrian Ndrangheta and the Sacra Corona Unita from Puglia, are becoming more active. The Ndrangheta have expanded internationally, particularly amongst Italian communities in Australia, while the Sacra Corona Unita gains influence in the Balkans where it co-operates with Albanians and Macedonians, trafficking not only in narcotics but also in illegal Eastern European immigrants and arms. As a result of this increased activity, Milan has become a seminal European money laundering centre.

Most of the heroin entering Italy is smuggled by Albanians and Macedonians, street pushing in Italy and surrounding countries being increasingly conducted by black Africans or illegal Chinese immigrants, members of the criminal labour market now existing in Europe. Italy, in particular, is having a huge problem with Chinese illegal immigrants: it is estimated there are over 100,000 in the country, transported in by Albanians from Bucharest, the base of a Triad society which deals in people. Latin American heroin trafficking organisations are also making their presence felt in Europe, especially Colombians in Rome and Madrid: having studied the market in the early 1990s, they are now exporting to Europe in substantial and increasing quantities.

A large percentage of the heroin coming into Germany arrives via the northern Balkan Route and is primarily handled by Chechens. The Netherlands, in particular Amsterdam, is still the drugs centre for Europe and a prime transit point for heroin from both the Golden Triangle and Crescent heading for European and American markets. Many dealers collect their supplies from the Netherlands: in April 1995, 90 kilograms of heroin worth £12 million were found in London under the false floor of a horse-box towed by a Dutch-registered vehicle. Even Switzerland, usually thought of as staid to the point of banality, is not exempt. Parts of Zurich are becoming notorious for attracting large numbers of addicts from all over Europe, catered to by over 100 gun-toting Lebanese and Kosovar Albanian pushers who deal in full view of the police.

France remains a heroin transit nation and is a main consumer with a serious urban addict problem. Distribution is still handled by traditional French organised crime syndicates which continue to process some heroin around Marseilles: as has long been the case, there are still heroin refining laboratories hidden in the rural south of France. Trafficking across the Straits of Gibraltar from Morocco has recently increased with heroin and cocaine beginning to take the place of hashish, drugs shipments entering through Gibraltar and along the adjacent Spanish coast. At least 100 rubber and fibreglass speedboats, costing £30,000 each, with engines capable of 50 knots and berthed at Gibraltar, regularly traverse the straits to Africa: more are harbouring in Spain. In July 1995, the Royal Gibraltar Police confiscated fifty vessels believed to have been used by drug smugglers. Gibraltar, with the rest of Spain, is also becoming a drug-dealing and money laundering centre.

Heroin in Britain mostly originates from the Golden Crescent. In 1993, 52 per cent came via Turkey and Cyprus, 12 per cent from Pakistan, with the remainder arriving via India, the Lebanon, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Ghana and Poland. Only about 1 per cent of heroin was from the Golden Triangle. Today, however, Colombian herion importation would considerably distort this analysis. Turkish and Cypriot dealers play an important role, sending most of their consignments by lorry disguised in general cargo or concealed in the vehicle's body or chassis, often within ‘traps' built into the vehicle, those constructed inside fuel tanks being the most reported. Their involvement is central: in London, one of the members of the prominent Turkish Cypriot Arif family has served a nine-year sentence for his role in an £8.5 million drug smuggling operation.

In 1993, 200 kilograms of heroin were found at Dover, hidden in a truck carrying tomatoes whilst a year later, heroin worth £9 million was detected in a lorry carrying a load of Mars bars. The total heroin seizure haul in Britain for 1994 was 620 kilograms but, in 1995, seizures virtually doubled to 1200 kilograms worth £150 million. In September 1995, three heroin hauls were seized in one week, worth a total value of £35 million. It is an indication of the profligacy of heroin in Britain today and makes one wonder how much gets through undetected: official figures state probably only 10 per cent of imported heroin is seized. It seems, furthermore, that smuggling into Britain will increase for heroin is coming through the Channel Tunnel with almost daily seizures, this conduit presumably set to play an increasing part in the future.

The street prices for heroin in Britain in 1995 were about £80 a gram or £10 for a one-twelfth to one-sixteenth of a gram fix but have more recently fallen to as low as £40 a gram in some parts of the country. The profit margin is massive. A kilogram of heroin in Pakistan costs approximately £1500 but the British distributor pays £27,000 per kilogram before cutting. After cutting, it is worth approximately £140,000. Prices are not the only factor to fluctuate. In 1992, British heroin was 45 per cent pure but it is now reduced to 35 per cent which means even greater distributor profits.

Since 1985, there had been some decline in heroin addiction in Britain, perhaps due to government advertising and the AIDS epidemic, but it is beginning to rise again. One place where addiction has soared is Jersey, in the Channel Islands. As an offshore tax haven, Jersey is attractive to dealers for there is more disposable income than in mainland Britain: addicts, therefore, have to pay three times the usual British street price. Addict numbers registered for detoxification have risen from 15 in 1993 to 60 in 1994 whilst there are estimated to be 400 addicts in all on the tiny island. They are supplied from England by either couriers or mail. An interesting aspect of the growth is that it is amongst young professionals not just transient youths. The usual factors claimed to lead to addiction – of social degradation or poverty – are absent: Jersey has no unemployment, no poor housing, no student population and no ethnic groups. The cause of growth in addiction is due to cultural causes rather than traditional need.

Europe has become a trafficker's paradise. With national barriers being opened, not only have easy trade and tourism been facilitated but so too has every crime from the amateur bootlegging of alcohol to computer fraud, terrorism and drug running. Traffickers are making full use of this convenience, as is indicated by the fact that of British heroin seizures made in 1993, over 55 per cent were from EU countries. The figure for 1995 is expected to be around or even above 70 per cent.

Whilst First World countries are the primary destinations of heroin, practically every country is somehow involved in the game. With extensive government corruption and organised crime, Nigeria is notorious as the nerve centre of Africa's drug trade: consequently, it has the highest heroin addiction rate in the continent. Corruption is, in fact, so endemic it has prompted an American Congressman to declare, ‘We gave some sniffer dogs to Nigerian customs, but it's a poisoned chalice. Dogs cannot be corrupted. They are a permanent danger for any custom authorities any time a minister's wife walks near them.' Mostly established in Lagos, Nigerian trafficking gangs, which are often tribally based, import from both ‘golden' regions, re-exporting to Europe and the USA where Nigerians control a number of urban distribution networks, their methods of smuggling being highly adaptable to prevalent enforcement strategies. Whilst a decade ago, Nigerian nationals were frequently couriers, today they are less likely to be involved as smugglers: the world's anti-narcotics agencies have come to recognise them. Now they employ other black West Africans, white and black South Africans, Europeans and Americans, who usually transport small amounts on intercontinental passenger flights, carrying them by ingestion. Ghana is a particularly popular source of smuggling mules for Nigerian gangs: there is no shortage of volunteers for a trip earns the mule US$2000, forty times the national average monthly wage. Often, the mule/trafficker contract is more than financial by involving a witch-doctor's ceremony in which the mule swears not to disclose his employer who, in turn, guarantees to look after the mule's family if he is caught. The
modus operandum
involves the old trick of flooding flights with couriers, accepting customs officers will be over-stretched, apprehending one or two whilst the rest escape detection. A newer development by Nigerian gangs is the transportation of large amounts concealed in commercial maritime cargoes.