On the Iranian border with new anti-trafficking police

Sweating beneath the furnace-like sun on the narrow veranda of a newly established border control post, Haji Shir, an anti-drug trafficking officer, stared out into the rolling nothingness of desert that is Islam Qalah in western Herat province, 1,300 km from the capital Kabul. Shir is the commander of a poorly paid and ill-equipped 50-strong team policing the border with Iran. The squad is trying to counter the heavily armed drug mafia that operates with ease along the 940-km border running heroin through Iran and on to Europe and Russia. According to estimates by Iranian drug authorities, about 50 percent of the total opiate production of Afghanistan transits through Iran. "We are the only tools at this post. There are not enough arms, no communication, no transport and, worst of all, sometimes no water to drink," the commander told IRIN at the isolated Tulai Mishri border control post. Tulai Mishri is one of the 10 new border control posts funded by Tehran - a bilateral initiative brokered by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). It's the first scheme of its kind to use Afghans as border guards along this rugged wasteland that is perfect for illegal trafficking. Until just recently only Iranians have been patrolling the porous mountain passes between the two countries. Equipped with rusty AK-47 assault rifles and based in a building that is not even connected by road to the other nine border posts, the odds are still very much on the side of the traffickers who have the latest GPS positioning systems, hi-tech communications gear, plenty of modern firepower and endless bundles of US dollars to buy off anyone left alive. The Afghan Interior Ministry, supported by Germany, the lead nation in Afghan police training, along with the UK - which leads the Afghan counter narcotics efforts - is in the process of training a 12,000 strong border force by 2005. While a 500-strong newly trained customs police is operating in Kabul international airport, authorities in the ministry said intensive efforts were under way to train thousands of new officers to counter drug trafficking and border infiltration over the next two years. But the rudimentary facilities at Tulai Mishri - one of very few border posts designed to apprehend heroin traffickers - indicate how much still needs to be done to stem the flow of drugs from Afghanistan. "I think this is the worst life and the hardest job with mountains and harsh desert which are extremely difficult to control," one of Shir's men commented, after asking for cigarettes and food. Conditions are better on the Iranian side of the border. "Let's look just a hundred metres beyond this zero point, they [Iranian border police] have everything they need, even an asphalt road to each post, but here it is like a prison without a jailer," the commander, who said they had not been paid their $30 monthly salary for several months, complained. Shir and his men are more concerned with protecting themselves from the trafficking gangs than with taking them on. "They have strong vehicles, Russian motorbikes and are heavily armed," Shir said, adding that their post was attacked by a group of smugglers at the end of April. While there are currently only three official crossing points along the seemingly endless Iranian border, Kabul has identified locations for 25 border control posts. Mir Azam, director of border control posts in Islam Qala, told IRIN the proposed posts would we located in the Afghan provinces of Herat, Farah and Nimruz, but would have little impact on the booming heroin trade. "These 25 posts will just mean traffickers will revert to the remaining thousands of kilometres of open, unpoliced border," he said. But the new posts, and teams like those led by Shir, are a start. "The issue of trafficking needs to be addressed separately from the issue of production," Mohammad Amirkhizi, head of UNODC in Afghanistan, told IRIN. He called for more international funding for law enforcement initiatives. "Unfortunately nobody here is prosecuted for drug trafficking," the UNODC representative said.