LETTER FROM KANDAHAR THE MASTER OF SPIN BOLDAK Undercover with Afghanistan’s drug-traffi cking border police By Matthieu Aikins When I arrived in Quetta, the dressed in Western clothes, I set off ed not to introduce myself as a jour- capital of Pakistan’s restive Baluch- on foot from my hotel toward the nalist; they seemed to accept that I istan Province, I found the city’s old courthouse. Perhaps because tour- was simply a young traveler interest- bazaar shuttered in preparation for ists have become a rare sight in this ed in poking around their rough Ashura, an important day of mourn- violent city, a Toyota Land Cruiser corner of the world. ing in the Shia calendar. In the stopped just ahead of me and two A few days later, one of the men, past, Ashura had served as an occa- men in the front beckoned to me. Jahanzeb, introduced me to his sion for sectarian fi ghting in Quetta, Their plump, clean- shaven faces cousin, Sikander, who soon began and so a cordon had been erected; I were unthreatening, so I walked taking me out around the city him- had to seek police permission, I was over to chat. When they learned I self. As I had already discovered, told, in order to photograph the was a foreign visitor, they invited Pashtuns are a frank and friendly lot procession. The following day, still me for a sumptuous lunch, and later with visitors, and one night, cruis- we drove around the city’s crowded ing around in the Lexus that Sikan- Matthieu Aikins is a freelance writer and bazaars and toured a restricted area der used as a mobile offi ce, he con- photographer based in New York City. of the military cantonment. I decid- fided to me that he was shipping 52 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / DECEMBER 2009 Illustrations by Danijel Zezelj AAikinsikins FFinal5inal5 rev2.inddrev2.indd 5252 110/27/090/27/09 99:04:18:04:18 AAMM forty mon, or two metric tons, of prodigious wealth, loyal soldiers, and arrived for me. The driver, tall and opium once a month from the Af- connections to top government clean-shaven with a gap-toothed smile, ghan border town of Spin Boldak. offi cials, Razik was seen as a ruth- looked me over as we accelerated The drugs were carried by a convoy, less, charismatic fi gure, a man who north. “Do you speak Pashto?” he a few dozen heavily armed men in brooked no opposition to his will. I asked me. I shook my head. “Urdu?” Land Cruisers, through the desert asked Sikander if he would take me “I speak Persian,” I offered in that into Baluchistan and then into Iran. to Afghanistan for a day to show language. Although the police in Afghanistan me Razik’s operation, and “Then just don’t say anything,” he and Pakistan were bribed to give the he agreed. muttered in Dari, the Afghan dialect convoy safe passage, the Iranian po- of Persian. He examined my half- lice were not, and encounters with Two months later, on a hazy Asian features and wiry beard, which them out in the desolate border- morning this past March, we arrived together gave me the look of an Af- lands often turned into violent, des- in the town of Chaman after four ghan from the north—an Uzbek or perate battles. Once the convoy hours on a crumbling road over the Hazara, perhaps—and then placed his made it across the border, the opium Khojak Pass. The town’s Afghan red embroidered cap, a typical Pashtun was delivered to a group of Iranian counterpart, Spin Boldak, sits just a accessory, on my head. Baluchis. Sikander didn’t accompa- few kilometers away, separated by a At the checkpoint, cutting into a ny the convoys personally, but by high concrete arch and a few dozen side lane, my driver wove, honked, and organizing and funding the opera- rifl e-toting guards. As we paused for a waved his way past the black-clad tion, he said, he was making be- break, squatting down in the dust of a Pakistani and camoufl age-clad Afghan tween $125,000 and $250,000 in truck yard for a late breakfast of bread guards. They waved back in recogni- profi ts each trip. and sour butter, the deep boom of an tion. We drove around the arch and At twenty-seven, Sikander was explosion echoed from the direction onto a wide, rough-paved highway prematurely owlish, with shaggy of the border. We all cringed at the swirling with dust and traffi c. “How coarse dark hair, a full mouth, and sound. Sikander swept up the blanket are you, my dear?” the driver asked in sly, almond eyes. His lanky frame we were eating on, and we walked Dari, grinning widely. “This moved with grace, and he handled back though the hard-packed, greasy is Afghanistan!” guns and luxury vehicles with confi - yard to the car. A consultation ensued dent ease. Sikander’s father also was a with a man dressed, like us, in a tradi- On the latest United Nations smuggler, slain by rivals when Sikan- tional long tunic; he leaned in Department of Safety and Security der was a child. But his family re- through the driver’s window to speak map, which color-codes Afghani- mained well connected with top po- urgently in Pashto. stan to denote levels of risk for U.N. lice offi cials in Baluchistan, and they, “It is confi rmed,” Sikander said after operations, we would have been, together with his ties to fellow Pash- the man left. He swiveled around to just then, in a tiny island of “high” tuns in Afghanistan, allowed him to where I sat in the back seat with Ja- orange surrounded by a wide sea of carry on his lucrative operation. hanzeb, his cousin. His lips were “extreme” red. The orange island is The most important of Sikander’s pursed together. “There was an explo- Spin Boldak and the road to Kanda- connections was Colonel Abdul sion at the border,” he told me. Jahan- har city; the red sea stretches across Razik, the leader of a tribal militia zeb, younger and with more delicate most of the provinces of Kandahar, and border police force that extends features, fi xed his eyes on me as well. Helmand, Zabul, and Uruzgan, and across Kandahar and Helmand prov- “Oh, Matthieu,” he said mournful- farther to the southeast. This sche- inces—which produce 80 percent of ly. “You are a big problem.” They had ma is illustrative of four striking Afghanistan’s opium, which in turn planned to avoid formalities by smug- facts. First and foremost, it depicts is nearly 90 percent of the world’s gling me across the border; now, be- how a ferocious and increasingly so- crop. Sikander was taking care to cause of the explosion, the guards phisticated insurgency—the “neo- cultivate his relationship with the would be on high alert. A few more Taliban,” as many now call them— colonel. “I am growing a baby tiger,” of Sikander’s friends came over to has spread across the predominantly he told me. “When it gets large, I the car, and as they began to discuss Pashtun south and southeast. Sec- will gift it to Razik.” At thirty years a plan, Jahanzeb turned to me occa- ond, that red sea also corresponds of age, Razik was the most powerful sionally to ask questions in English. with the indefinite deployment of Afghan Border Police offi cer in the Do you want to go back? Do you 20,000 additional U.S. soldiers, sent southern part of the country—a for- want to go across on a motorcycle? I here during the months leading up mer child refugee who scrambled to didn’t want to go back—it had taken to the eighth anniversary of the power during the post-9/11 chaos, his me weeks of hanging around Quetta 2001 invasion, in October. Intended rise abetted by a ring of crooked offi - to arrange the trip—so we decided to bolster the International Security cials in Kabul and Kandahar as well that Sikander and Jahanzeb would Assistance Force (ISAF), a patch- as by overstretched NATO com- go ahead and send for me later. work of different nations, the in- manders who found his control over After a few tense hours in Chaman, crease was a belated recognition of a key border town useful in their a white Corolla with a gold plastic just how badly the country has fared war against the Taliban. With his armani air-freshener on its dashboard after years of neglect and misman- LETTER FROM KANDAHAR 53 AAikinsikins FFinal5inal5 rev2.inddrev2.indd 5353 110/27/090/27/09 99:04:28:04:28 AAMM agement. Third, all the red regions have shifted to the south, where se- watched him amble slowly toward on the UNDSS map serve as a curity is most tenuous. the border post. rough approximation of the areas Like much of Afghan life, drug Razik turned to me suddenly. “Do with opium under cultivation, repre- operations tend to be organized by you know what I do?” he asked. “I senting a billion-dollar industry tribal and family affi liations. Colonel am a smuggler.” He said it proudly— whose tentacles grip both the neo- Razik has built his own militia it is, after all, the natural heritage of Taliban and the fledgling Afghan around his Adozai, a prominent his tribe, which has straddled the state, from foot soldier to govern- branch of the Achakzai, a Pashtun border since the British drew it ment minister.