Take the War to the Drug Lords

By GRETCHEN PETERS
NYT

A SKINNY man opened the gate at the sprawling compound in Quetta, in western Pakistan. When I asked if the property belonged to Afghanistan’s most powerful drug smuggler, he smiled and nodded. “Haji Juma Khan has 200 houses,” he said. “And this is one of them.”

I had been trying to track down Mr. Khan for years when I found this residence on a dusty, garbage-strewn alley. It hardly seemed an auspicious address for a man who American officials say moved as much as $1 billion worth of opium every year, hiring the Taliban to protect his colossal narcotics shipments and paying corrupt officials in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to look the other way.

I said I was a journalist and wanted to interview the boss. “He is on the run and we have not seen him,” said another man, who introduced himself as Mr. Khan’s clerk. “But please come inside and have a cup of tea.”

Even with the top man on the run, Mr. Khan’s network ran a string of heroin labs in the mountainous area where the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran merge. He had built huge underground storage bunkers in remote deserts for his product. He came to the attention of Western law enforcement officials for sending drug convoys made up of dozens of S.U.V.’s packed with narcotics, which were then unloaded onto ships along Pakistan’s southern coast.

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