Heroin Found in Alleged Car of Top Afghan Border Official

[sabra]

Source: ABC News

A manhunt is on in Afghanistan for the man President Hamid Karzai wanted to name head of his country's border police, ABC News has learned, following the discovery that the official owned a car filled with heroin intercepted by members of the Kabul City Criminal Investigations Division.

U.S. authorities confirmed the seizure of 130 kilograms of heroin in June in a car that allegedly belonged to Haji Zahir Qadir, the former chief of the border police for northern Takhar province.

Haji Zahir was not in the car when it was intercepted. His cousin and "right hand," Bilal, was present and arrested.

Afghan officials say Karzai wanted to name Haji Zahir to head the border police, but a U.S. military intelligence assessment obtained by ABC News in 2006 named Zahir as a drug smuggler.

Read more: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/08/heroin-found-in.html

[JohnyCanuck]

1. In Afghanistan, who isn't a drug smuggler?

On the switch of the Afghanistan war lord/politicians to production of a value added product, heroin, instead of just plain old opium, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan has this to say:

Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time

By Craig Murray

SNIP

It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons – especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance – to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers.

President Karzai is a good man. He has never had an opponent killed, which may not sound like much but is highly unusual in this region and possibly unique in an Afghan leader. But nobody really believes he is running the country. He asked America to stop its recent bombing campaign in the south because it was leading to an increase in support for the Taliban. The United States simply ignored him. Above all, he has no control at all over the warlords among his ministers and governors, each of whom runs his own kingdom and whose primary concern is self-enrichment through heroin.

My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=469983&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true

[BridgeTheGap]

2. It was probably just a side business

God knows he was probably paid peanuts!

[Turbineguy]

6. Afghanway!

Poppies are poppin out all over!

[Speaker]

3. .

"Alleged Car"

It was a prius?

[Maat]

5. HEY ...

YOU show proper respect to my Prius. It runs on "an aura of superiority," you know ("I'm so good - I'm helping Mother Earth).

AND, it can go 100 MPH - just ask Al Gore Jr (& get great gas mileage while it's doing it)!

[slackmaster]

4. Probably just his personal stash

:D