In this shocking new film we ride the drugs caravan, from cultivation, to process, to market. A fascinating glimpse into the hidden world of Afghanistan's drug barons. Over 90% of the world’s opium now comes from Afghanistan. In this shocking new film, we ride the drugs caravan, from cultivation, to process, to market. On route, we lift the curtain on the hidden world of the drug barons; learn how to process heroin in the crudest of laboratories and encounter deadly gunfights on the Iranian border...
Afghanistans Opium Trail. Video hosted on Google. In bleak Afghan villages, the lure of opium cultivation is clear. With no other viable alternative for farmers, and no real law enforcement from the Afghan police or foreign troops, growing poppies is the only way to feed hungry mouths. Ahmad Ollah has 18 of them to fill. His opium is offered for sale in poppy sheets, embossed on both sides. He's hoping for $40 per kilo for his latest harvest, but despite his pleading, $34 is the best price he can get from the drug baron's envoys. Crouching behind rocks in the mountain passes between Iran and Afghanistan, Iranian guards prepare an ambush. As opium smugglers come into view, the guards open fire. One trafficker falls to the ground immediately, killed by their first shot. But the others fight back until police reinforcements arrive, wielding large machine guns. Shoot outs like this happen every day. Over 200 Iranian guards are killed a year patrolling the Afghan border. “Drugs production has increased tenfold in Afghanistan”, laments Captain Miri. So much opium is flooding across the border, anti-drug units now calculate the value of their hauls in tonnes rather than kilos. In bleak Afghan villages, the lure of opium cultivation is clear. “What else are we to do”, despairs farmer Ahmad Ollah. “We have nothing else, just opium”. He’s hoping for $40 per kilo for his latest harvest. But it has been a bumper crop for everyone and there is a glut of opium on the market. Despite his pleading, Ollah gets only $34 per kilo from the drug baron’s envoys. Mansur Khan is the man behind the offer. A thick set man with a relaxed air, a tribal ruler with his own personal militia. “I know all this is illegal”, he freely admits. “But I employ 400 men who are responsible for the well being of their families”. A gulp of vodka for good luck and he packs his smugglers off, laden with several hundred kilos of opium. Khan considers himself invincible. “You have no idea how loyal the natives are to us”, he boasts. “Even when it comes to a shoot-out”. And there are many of those. At the start of 500 km trek to Iran, the river Helmand has to be crossed. “It’s not easy to travel aboard a raft with a grenade launcher on your shoulder,” grumbles one smuggler. At the other side, they join a camel caravan. Then a vehicle convoy meets them, armed with night vision equipment to travel in the dead of night. But things aren’t going to plan. The scout radios a warning; “Turn the car around and go another route”. In the Afghan highlands, opium is processed into heroin. A car jack serves as a drug press. “This thing works wonders”, croons the lab worker. It’s a simple production process: pressing, diluting, heating and pressing again until all the liquid runs out. Child’s play. And the only gauge of the purity of this deadly sludge is a quick PH test at the end. After 30 years of war, Afghanistan is in ruins. Traditionally, the one problem it’s never faced is drug addiction. Now, all that is changing. With no future prospects and no sign of things improving, the young are turning to drugs. In the ruins of a burnt out school, junkies smoke spliffs of heroin. “You’re ruining your lives”, laments the local policeman. But his words are in vain. Tribal structures are being subverted; the young no longer listen to what their elders say. And Afghanistan’s economy remains entirely based on drugs.
 According to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Afghanistan produced more than 70% of the world's opium in 2000, and about 80% of the opiate products in Europe. In July 2000 the leader of Afghanistan's former Taleban government, Mullah Omar, declared a nationwide ban on opium cultivation for one year. The United Nations Drugs Control Program (UNDCP) believes the ban was a success, and production plunged to negligible levels during 2001. But with the demise of the Taleban, there are fears Afghanistan will quickly reclaim its status as the world's largest producer of illicit opium. The UNDCP provides estimates of the level of opium poppy cultivation per region by conducting a census of farmers on the ground. Opium cultivation and processing is most extensive in the south of the country, in particular Helmand province. Laboratories convert the raw opium into a morphine base, white heroin or one of three grades of brown heroin. This is then transported through a number of intermediate countries - where it is sometimes further refined and processed - before being shipped on to Europe and North America. In the past, a large number of laboratories were located across the border in Pakistan's tribal region, but a Pakistani Government crackdown has forced many of these to relocate across the border. Afghanistan also produces a large amount of hashish - a processed form of cannabis - which is mainly transported through Pakistan and the Central Asian republics.
In the 1970s, Afghanistan was known for its dramatic mountain scenery and the unparalleled hospitality of its people. At the turn of the 21st century the country was more synonymous with war and terrorism, the picture of a failed state. The fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 and the subsequent reconstruction attempts have done much to address this view, but in early 2007 Afghanistan’s future remained on a knife-edge. Having been bled white by ten years of Soviet occupation, Afghanistan was dropped by the international community almost the minute the last Red Army tank withdrew in 1989, allowing it to slip into the chaos of civil war and the Taliban. Promises not to repeat the same mistake 13 years later proved half-hearted at best. Progress in development of education and the political processes (which have seen successful presidential and parliamentary elections) are real enough. Kabul and other cities have boomed with increasing trade and new constructions. Most of the country is at peace, but the state remains perilously weak. The return to power of many of the rejected warlords of the 1990s has cynically proved to Afghans that you can apparently have peace or justice but not both. The booming economy has failed to touch the countryside where most Afghans live and development programmes have mostly ignored the centrally important agricultural sector, particularly in the Pashtun regions that originally spawned the Taliban.
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