Pakistan

History

From 1956, the government of Pakistan licensed farmers in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) to produce opium for the state monopoly. The state processed the raw opium for sale to registered addicts. Although unregulated distribution and production was prohibited, inefficient monitoring of licensed opium sales resulted in many merchants buying opium illicitly cultivated in NWFP and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). State control was further relaxed in 1971 when contemporary commentators reported an almost total lack of authority over the “licit” trade. Increasing demand for monopoly opium inflated both licit and illicit production.

Nevertheless, it was external factors that launched Pakistan as a major actor in the global illicit narcotics trade. By 1972, opium production in Turkey and heroin manufacturing in France had been suppressed, removing Europe and North America's primary source of illicit heroin. In 1975 the first heroin laboratories appeared in NWFP and Baluchistan Province. Two events in 1979 increased Pakistan's importance as a transhipment point for south Asian illicit narcotics to Europe, North America and, by the late 1980s, Iran. First, Iran (the primary land route to Europe) was closed due to the Islamic Revolution and later the Iran-Iraq War. Second, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan inflated Afghan illicit opium production, much of which was manufactured into heroin in Pakistan.

Also in 1979, the Enforcement of the Hadd Ordinance was passed in Pakistan prohibiting the nonmedical or scientific trade and consumption of intoxicating drugs. The sale of official opium to registered consumers ceased and production and distribution was prohibited. This was followed by a surge [Page 626]in public arrests and punishments, and the eradication of opium fields. Near constant monitoring of opium producing areas was undertaken to enforce prohibition. In NWFP, over one million rupees was collected in fines from opium farmers.

Illicit production had been steadily increasing, peaking in 1979 at 800 metric tons, during which time Pakistan was the world's largest source of illicit opium. However, the surplus deflated the farm-gate price of opium during a period in which involvement in the trade, due to the enforcement of the Hadd Ordinance, was increasingly risky. Thus, in 1980 production declined to 125 metric tons and continued to decrease until 1986.

The surplus also increased the number of heroin manufacturing laboratories operating in FATA and Baluchistan, including for the conversion of Afghan opium. By 1994 Pakistani-Afghan heroin supplied approximately 75 percent of the European, Arabian, and African markets and 25 percent of the U.S. market. These high supply levels are generally explained by two major factors. First, Pakistan and the United States were supporting the Afghan insurgency in Soviet-controlled Afghanistan and neither state was willing to suppress a trade that their allies in the conflict relied upon. Second, endemic state corruption resulted in many high-level traffickers being politically protected. However, by 1988 Pakistan—due to domestic concerns over rising heroin consumption and the removal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan—began to strengthen drug control legislation and interdict heroin refineries. By 1997 almost all heroin manufacturers had moved to Afghanistan.

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