CIA Transnational Anti-crime and Anti-drug Activities - Drug Trade - Southwest Asia - Possible Effects On Iran

Possible Effects On Iran

There are claims and counterclaims that the US may have used groups involved in drug smuggling in an effort to destabilize Iran. Hard evidence is lacking. The group, "Jundullah", is made up of ethnic Baluchis, and is in the Baluchistan region of Pakistan, bordering Iran. It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials. Again, there is no hard evidence. The situation also may reflect a conflict between the U.S. military and the Vice-President Dick Cheney, in that the military believes the weapons may be purchased through the drug trade, but Cheney believes they are being supplied by the government of Iran.

The Inter Press Service report quoted United States Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns as saying, on June 12, 2007, that Iran was “transferring arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan”, putting it in the context of a larger alleged Iranian role of funding “extremists” in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Iraq. "The following day he asserted that there was “irrefutable evidence” of such Iranian arms supply to the Taliban." The reporter mentioned that Cheney had used the same phrase "irrefutable evidence" on Sep. 20, 2002, in referring to the administration’s accusation that Saddam Hussein had a programme to enrich uranium as the basis for a nuclear weapon. It is the reporter's theory that the recurrence of the phrase meant the statement could have been crafted by Cheney, but it also could be a coincidental use of a phrase that has been used in other official announcements.

The Jundallah group is made up Baluchi tribesmen, often operating out of Pakistan, but the Baluchi have a complex relationship with Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. While news sources agree that the US government has not made a Presidential Finding that covert action is needed, nor reported such action to the eight senior members of Congress who oversee the most sensitive operations, the argument is made that CIA subsidies go to Pakistan, which, in turn, funds the group. If Pakistan does all the funding, the letter of the law would be followed, in that the US is not subsidizing the group.

It is possible that, as in Southeast Asia, the activities of a group are not directly funded, but are funded by allowing them to operate in the drug trade. General Dan McNeill, the NATO commander in Afgahanistan, pointed to the "U.S. command’s knowledge of the link between the heroin trade and trafficking in arms between southeastern Iran and southern Afghanistan. The main entry point for opium and heroin smuggling between Afghanistan and Iran runs through the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan to the capital of Zahedan. The two convoys of arms which were intercepted by NATO forces last spring had evidently come through that Iranian province."

According to a report by Robert Tait of The Guardian Feb. 17, Sistan-Baluchistan province has also been the setting for frequent violent incidents involving militant Sunni groups and drug traffickers. Tait reported that more than 3,000 Iranian security personnel had been killed in armed clashes with drug traffickers since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

CIA representatives denied involvement to ABC News, saying "the account of alleged CIA action is false" and reiterated that the U.S. provides no funding of the Jundullah group, and no hard evidence of US involvement. Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.

While Herat is not the highest-volume area of opium trade, Herat, and the other Iranian border areas of Farah, and Nimroz, have some of the highest prices, presumably due to demand from the Iranian market. "Opium prices are especially high in Iran, where law enforcement is strict and where a large share of the opiate consumption market is still for opium rather than heroin. Not surprisingly, it appears that very significant profits can be made by crossing the Iranian border or by entering Central Asian countries like Tajikistan."

"The UNODC estimates 60 percent of Afghanistan’s opium is trafficked across Iran’s border (much of it in transit to Europe). Seizures of the narcotic by Iranian authorities in the first half of this year are up 29 percent from the same period last year, according to the country’s police chief, as reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)...The Washington Post reports that Iran has the world’s highest per capita number of opium addicts ... Experts say those affected most are the millions of unemployed Iranians and youth chafing under the restrictions placed on them from the Islamic government and basij, or civilian morals police. The Iranian government has gone through several phases in dealing with its drug problem.

First, during the 1980s, its approach was supply-sided: "Law-and-order policies with zero tolerance led to the arrest of tens of thousands of addicts and the execution of thousands of narcotics traffickers." "There are an estimated 68,000 Iranians imprisoned for drug trafficking and another 32,000 for drug addiction (out of a total prison population of 170,000, based on 2001 statistics)"

Beehner said "Tehran also has spent millions of dollars and deployed thousands of troops to secure its porous 1,000-mile border with Afghanistan and Pakistan... a few hundred Iranian drug police die each year in battles with smugglers. Referring to the head of the UNODC office in Iran, Roberto Arbitrio, Beehner quoted Arbitrio in an interview with The Times. "You have drug groups like guerrilla forces, ... shoot with rocket launchers, heavy machine guns, and Kalashnikovs."

A second-phase strategy came under President Mohammad Khatami, focused more on prevention and treatment. Drug traffic is considered a security problem, and much of it is associated with Baluchi tribesmen, who recognize traditional tribal rather than national borders. Current (2007) reports cite Iranian concern with ethnic guerillas on the borders, possibly supported by the CIA.

Iranian drug strategy changed again under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office in 2005. Iran’s drug policy has been reconsidered and shifted back toward supply interdiction and boosting border security. It is unclear if this is connected to more wide-ranging concerns with border security, perhaps in relation to Baluchi guerillas in Iran

Samii's 2003 paper described Iran's "primary approach to the narcotics threat interdiction.Iran shares a 936 kilometer border with Afghanistan and a 909 kilometer border with Pakistan, and the terrain in the two eastern provinces—Sistan va Baluchistan and Khorasan—is very rough. The Iranian government has set up static defenses along this border. This includes concrete dams, berms, trenches, and minefields...