Pakistan is one of the world’s top transit corridors for opiates and cannabis, which are pervasively trafficked through the country’s porous borders with Afghanistan and Iran and globally distributed through Pakistan’s seaports, airports, postal services, and unpatrolled coastal areas.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that 40 percent of the drugs (heroin and marijuana) originating in Afghanistan are routed through Pakistan enroute to China, the Gulf States, Africa, and Europe. Additionally, poppy cultivation in some areas of Pakistan increased in 2014. Pakistan is also a major transit country for precursor chemicals used to produce heroin and methamphetamine.
In 2014, Pakistan’s progress toward building a resilient, effective, and self-sustaining counternarcotics capacity saw success in the form of multiple noteworthy seizures and positive anti-drug awareness activities. However, budget limitations and fragile political will continued to hinder counter-narcotics efforts, while law enforcement agencies remained largely pre-occupied with more urgent threats to national security such as violent extremism. Domestic drug consumption remains an ongoing problem.
In 2013, UNODC released the results of a nationwide drug user survey, revealing that Pakistan is home to 6.5 million drug users who consume 59 MT of heroin and cannabis annually. After studying the data further, UNODC revised these figures in 2014 and now estimates that there are actually 6.7 million drug users in Pakistan with the same consumption rate.
UNODC also reported that Pakistan lacks the capacity to treat drug addiction and to properly educate its populace about the menace of illicit narcotics. Pakistan’s Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) is staffed at senior levels by Army officers though it is a civilian law enforcement agency constitutionally mandated to serve as Pakistan’s lead counter-narcotics entity.
The ANF’s 2014 budget of $14.82 million was insufficient to operate and maintain vehicles, equipment, and office space donated by foreign partners. Nearly 80 percent of the ANF budget is used to pay salaries. Moreover, the ANF’s 3,100 employees were thinly deployed across some 40 stations and field offices spanning every province and administrative territory except the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The ANF has not operated in the FATA since mid-2012, when a court injunction challenged its jurisdiction. Pakistan Customs is the only law enforcement agency conducting routine counter-narcotics operations in every province and territory, including the FATA.
POPPY CULTIVATION
In 2013, the Ministry of Narcotics Control merged with the Ministry of Interior (MOI), placing the ANF under the oversight of Pakistan’s largest internal security bureau. Though the move caused some friction with senior ANF commanders accustomed to operating more autonomously, MOI oversight has the potential to improve long-term strategic and operational coordination among Pakistan’s 27 law enforcement agencies holding counter-narcotics mandates.
Pakistan’s main opium poppy growing areas remain in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), FATA, and north-eastern Balochistan. Insecurity in these regions has prevented reliable ground surveying, thereby making it difficult to determine precise cultivation levels. In 2014, the ANF reported 1,227 hectares (ha) of poppy under cultivation and eradicated 1,010 ha, leaving a balance of 217 ha that were not eradicated.
U.S. government estimates for 2014 are not yet available. However, 2013 estimates indicated a significant increase in poppy cultivation, with 4,300 ha in traditional growing areas like KP, FATA, and Balochistan.
According to UNODC, 160 to 200 mt of Afghan heroin have been annually trafficked through Pakistan in recent years, including 2014. The ANF reported that over the first eight months of 2014, it seized 2.48 metric tons (MT) of heroin, 18.32 MT of opium, four kilograms (kg) of cocaine, and 38.52 MT of hashish. In October, the ANF confiscated 108 kilograms of heroin from the Lahore Airport, which was destined for Malaysia.
Furthermore, Pakistan Customs seized 66 kilograms of heroin, 13.3 MT of opium, 38.53 MT of poppy seeds, 1.34 MT of hashish, and 1.5 kg of amphetamine crystals from January to August 2014. From January to September 2014, Pakistani authorities arrested over 31,481 suspects on drug charges. Law enforcement agencies registered over 30,588 cases, with ANF registering 668 cases with a 90 percent conviction rate.
However, almost the same percentage of cases is overturned on appeal. The vast majority of these cases involved low-level possession or small quantity courier trafficking. Suspects arrested by ANF – mostly small-time traffickers – were tried in special narcotics courts that only hear cases put forth by the ANF, and the ANF employed its own prosecutor corps to prosecute the cases.
DRUG ADDICTS INCREASE
UNODC’s 2013 nation-wide drug user survey indicated that 6.5 million Pakistanis aged 15 to 64 – about 5.8 percent of the population – used drugs for non-medical purposes at least once in the 12 months preceding questioning. In 2014, UNODC revised their results and now estimate that there are 6.7 million drug users throughout Pakistan, more than three percent of the country’s total population.
Cannabis and opioids were the most prevalent drugs consumed, with four million and 2.7 million users, respectively. However, the 2014 updated survey results also tallied 1.6 million users of painkillers, 1.5 million users of synthetic tranquilizers/sedatives, and 93,000 users of amphetamine-type simulants (ATS). In total, the survey classified 4.1 million drug users aged 15 to 64 as drug addicts.
Pakistan’s police officers and teachers have historically lacked knowledge about the harmful physiological properties of drugs, or their destructive effects on society. Pakistan’s drug treatment capacities remained insufficient to meet demand, with fewer than 100 clinics operating nationwide. Very few public hospitals offer drug addiction treatment services, though Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was the first province to take steps to integrate basic addiction counselling into its public health apparatus.
Lacking government funding, over 90 percent of Pakistan’s detoxification centers are operated by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As a result, cost remains the primary obstacle preventing widespread access to treatment, leaving 75 percent of opiate addicts without an avenue to seek help. Fewer than 30,000 drug users received detoxification therapy in 2014, the majority of whom were women due to a lack of institutional capacity to serve women.
CORRUPTION
The Government of Pakistan does not facilitate the illegal production or trafficking of illegal drugs, nor the laundering of the proceeds. However, corruption remains a major challenge to the practice of law enforcement. Although parliamentary oversight committees, an independent judicial system, and a critical free press exposed corrupt practices in 2014, the consequences for perpetrators were rarely severe.
Accordingly, corruption continues to facilitate the movement of contraband, including in the form of bribes to public servants. Additionally in 2014, the Narcotics Control Division (NCD) discovered that members of their staff had embezzled funds. NCD referred the case to the Federal Investigative Authority and subsequently suspended the responsible employees.
The ANF is responsible for conducting complex narcotics investigations with a small staff, while working within a judicial system where prosecutors and judges are overworked, underpaid, and ill prepared to successfully prosecute cases that involve modern investigative techniques. Since the passing of the Fair Trial Act in 2013, the ANF can submit evidence gathered from telephone intercepts so long as they first receive permission from a judge to conduct the wiretap. As a result of recent changes to the law in 2013, the ANF does not have the ability to purchase information from confidential sources. This severely hampers the capabilities of the ANF to develop information on the most complex criminal organizations operating in the country, which narcotics proceeds often fund.
Although Pakistan continues to face enormous economic and security challenges that often exceed narcotics trafficking in national security priorities, many of these challenges are interconnected. Pakistan could more effectively reduce drug trafficking if its law enforcement agencies coordinated more closely, shared information more readily, and expended limited resources more efficiently. Increased public awareness about the drug trade and its negative societal influences would further solidify concerted government action across law enforcement agencies.
– Excerpted from International
Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 2015
