Pakistan and Drugs - Saga of Haji Ayub Afridi

The saga of Haji Ayub Afridi is an illuminating illustration of the troubling links between traffickers and politicians in Pakistan, as well as the shady deals made by the United States with both sides. Pakistan's biggest drug trafficker, Haji Ayub Afridi, returned to Pakistan on August 25, 1999 after serving a three and a half year sentence in a U.S. prison and paying a $500,000 dollar fine. From his refuge in Kabul and with an Afghan passport, Afridi had voluntarily travelled to Dubai, from where he boarded a cargo flight to the U.S. in December 1995 after “negotiating” with American authorities. Hardly had his feet touched Pakistani soil when the ANF arrested him and detained him at first in a secret location for six weeks. He is today imprisoned in Karachi and awaiting trial for the export of 6.5 tons of hashish seized at Antwerp, Belgium, in the 1980s. Even those close to him do not hide the fact that he also became an important heroin trafficker during the war in Afghanistan.

Haji Ayub owns a palace reminiscent of A Thousand and One Nights in Landi Kotal, part of the Khyber tribal agency not far from the Afghan border. A warrant for police to bring Haji Ayub before the court was first issued in 1983 following the discovery of 17 tons of hashish in a warehouse in Baluchistan. Three years later he was the subject of a wanted notice issued after a smuggler arrested in Belgium denounced him as his supplier. At the time he was under the protection of authorities in the tribal agency, which in theory he could not leave. The military coup against Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on August 6, 1990 allowed him to be one of eight deputies elected to Parliament from the tribal agencies (FATA) and to consequently benefit from parliamentary immunity. He ran under the ticket of the Islamic Democratic Alliance, the coalition of the new Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. On May 16, 1992 he was even part of a delegation of 60 Pakistani tribal chiefs which traveled to Afghanistan to mediate between antagonists there.

But sensing that the military was not going to tolerate for long the corruption and chaos which characterized Nawar Sharif’s first government, the barons of the tribal zones, including Haji Ayub, switched their support to the opposition headed by Benazir Bhutto, and participated in the manoeuvres which allowed the Pakistani President, Ishaq Khan, to dismiss Prime Minister Nawar Sharif on April 18,1993. This favor earned him a new immunity. However, his candidacy in the following elections was rejected and he was forced to go into hiding, dividing his time between Pakistan’s tribal areas, Afghanistan, and the United Arab Emirates. He was approached by the Americans (with Benazir Bhutto herself acting as intermediary), who allegedly promised him a lenient sentence most likely in recognition of “services” he provided during the war in Afghanistan. In the end he accepted to go to the United States.

On 29 November 2001, Pakistan released imprisoned Ayub Afridi without any explaination. He was freed from prison in Karachi after serving just a few weeks of a seven-year sentence for the export of 6.5 tons of hashish, seized in Belgium, in the 1980s. (He had been in custody for over two years). He had also been fined 5 million rupees (US$82,000). No reasons were given for Afridi’s release, or under which legislation he was allowed to return to his home town in Khyber Agency in North Western Frontier Province.

Sources say that Afridi’s constituencies in eastern and southern Afghan provinces have been revived following the withdrawal of the Taliban, and with them the drugs trade. Commanders such as Haji Mohammed Zaman and Malik Hazrat Ali are once again in total control in these areas. These commanders used to be the biggest heroin and opium mafia in Afghanistan’s Pashtun belt and worked with Haji Ayub Afridi.