A Fateful Harvest - part 5 - A heroin lab bust

The Taliban uses profits from opium as a source of revenue. Video of an anti-narcotic police bust of a heroin lab in Badakhshaan province.

Two AM in Badahkshan province and the anti-narcotics police begin their operation. With the morning light, they arrive in a remote village. They've lost time and -- possibly - the element of surprise ...

Amin: Where is your father?
Man: Responds

Colonel Amin Ali -- head of the provincial anti-drug force -- hurries with his team through the village ... There's still far to go and no certainty they'll find what they've come for... But the portable generator is a good sign.




And further along the ravine, they find it... A makeshift heroin processing lab ... with 600 kilograms of opium ready to be processed into 75 kilograms of heroin.
Wholesale value in neighboring Iran a quarter of a million dollars ...
This time, the lab workers were tipped off and escaped ... but not before converting the raw opium into a solid morphine base, -- the step before refining it further into heroin.

Amin:
The water is [collected] then brought in big bowls and Then is boiled in these barrels Then, when the water boils, the opium is put in.




The opium dissolves into a brown liquid and ultimately becomes the morphine base.
It can later be processed into various grades of heroin for smoking or injecting.
Given the remote location and difficulty of the terrain, Amin will have his men pour out the liquid here and destroy any remaining raw opium or bags of chemicals.
This is the eleventh lab Colonel Amin and his men have raided in Badakhshan during the last year.
But it's too soon to declare a victory in the province's drug war. Police reports claim many other primitive heroin labs in Badakhshan. They exist because the big money's in processing.




Barnet Rubin:
The UN office on drugs and crime, has estimated in recent years that the farmers are getting from 20-30% and that traffickers, corrupt officials, Taliban and other participants in it like people who make heroin out of opium are getting the remaining seventy or eighty percent '

Seventy to eighty percent of a yearly four billion dollar revenue stream is a staggering amount of money. The average per capita income in Afghanistan is under 400 dollars a year. Few legal jobs can match the money earned in the drug trade.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• opium
• afghanistan
• afghan
• heroin
• poppy
• drug
• trade
• taliban
• ill

[Grimerson]

i would have jumped head first in the darkest barrel

[assyrianracist]

@Neweddy24 You've obviously got no idea what kind of powerful grip opium and heroin has on you. I laughed out loud when I read your comment. Why dont you get addicted to opiates, then smoke a little and 'not get crazy with it'. Your absolutely clueless.

[BBnick50000]

dude, i swear, i absolutely swear that i would eat the dirt if i was there... it would be instinctive..

[anuangelseyes]

That was probably the only means of support for that farmer and his family-its total bullshit people think they can decide whats right and wrong for others-You should be FREE to choose whatever you want to create or ingest.LEAVE THESE POOR FARMERS ALONE!!

[hardcorekidbr00tal]

:'(

[kingmaxx]

75kg in america is 3 millions plus and after its sold to users worth at least 8 million

[AllisterCaine]

i just cried, as they poured it onto the ground. :(

[dj2ndhand]

Decriminalize heroin !

[meowfest2011]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

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[popper504]

damn 75 kg of heroin goes for 250,000 dollars in Iran. I could sell that on the streets over here for MILLIONS!!!!!!!!!!!