The Afghan police chief doesn't realize his voice is being taped. So pardon him if he brags about his life as a drug trafficker. In a friendly conversation recorded in his home last summer, he tells of his quarrels with another drug-dealing police commander in the country's northern Takhar Province; about driving through a rival's police checkpoint with 500 kilos of heroin in his car; and his adventures in rescuing three heroin-smuggling friends from the clutches of Tajik policemen. It's just another part of the job, he says. "If my adventure were filmed, it would be a very exciting movie," chuckles the commander, referred to hereafter as "Ahmed Noor." On the tape, he laughs. "The UN should give me an award." But on one point the former mujahideen commander is certain: "Even if all the world were to come to Afghanistan, they will not be able to stop smuggling." In relative terms, Mr. Noor is a small player in an illegal business that generates $2.7 billion a year, more than half the value of the country's legal economy. Afghan officials and foreign diplomats increasingly call this central Asian country a "narco-state," as top officials find it more profitable to flout laws than enforce them. Very few major Afghan officials have been removed for involvement in drug trafficking, in part because of the lack of evidence, and in part because the country has only recently created special tribunals to handle major drug cases. For this reason, the Monitor launched its own investigation in a province known for trafficking, to see how prevalent the drug trade is among police chiefs and what evidence could be found. Sending an investigative unit with a hidden minidisk recorder to the northern province of Takhar - where Afghanistan's medium and low-grade heroin is trafficked into Tajikistan, and on toward Europe - the Monitor recorded four police commanders. All of the names in this story have been changed. The Monitor deemed it too dangerous for our investigators to confront each of these commanders with the taped evidence, and too unfair to their reputations to release their names without giving them a chance to defend themselves. But the statements in these tapes - gathered by investigators who have excellent reputations collecting testimony for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, among others - provide a rare inside view of how drug corruption has trickled down to the front lines in the country's faltering war on drugs.
Commander Dost
"Commander Dost" is commander of a border police unit that patrols a large swath of the border with Tajikistan. In his taped conversation, Dost reveals how widespread the drug trade has become, as police commanders compete with each other to dominate the drug trade in Takhar Province. "For one year I did the smuggling," he says, on the lawn of his home. "It was not hidden from anybody. It was obvious to everybody. I put my RPG (rocket-propelled grenade launcher) on my shoulder.... I became a dangerous smuggler." But increasingly, Dost finds himself being run out of the drug business by a group of more powerful police commanders. These commanders have been shutting out all other competitors in the drug trafficking business, says Commander Dost. A few years back, one of these commanders sent eight men to ambush Commander Dost. "Fortunately I had 25 of my [tribesmen] with me," says Dost. "I used the RPG and fired at the enemy in front of us, and behind us. Finally I made about $70,000 for myself from the drug money." But at one point, he was captured with $370,000 worth of heroin, and had to sell everything he had - including his Swiss Rado watches and most of his heavy weapons - in order to pay back the owners of that drug. In another instance, Dost was captured by his chief competitor, another police commander. The commander "caught me once with 56 kg of drugs. He asked me, 'Will you do it again?' and I told him that I would never do that again. Right after I promised him that I would not do that again, I came home and took another 100 kilos of drug and put it in my Russian jeep and took it to sell." "These persecutors do it themselves, like 300 kilos to 400 kilos each time," Dost complains. These days, "all the smuggling is now in the hands" of these commanders, "and no one can do anything without [their] permission. Except me. When I do it, I tell my boys, 'Anybody who wants to stop you, you should kill them.' "

Commander Nasir
"Commander Nasir" is the police commander of a border district in Takhar Province. Like Commander Dost, Nasir is a relatively small player in the drug trade, but he gives an inside picture of how some of the bigger police commanders - both in Afghanistan and in neighboring Tajikistan - punish drug-trafficking competitors to burnish their law-enforcement credentials, or take bribes from those willing to pay for favorable treatment. "One day I counted how much I had given" a top police commander, says Nasir, who was a longtime commander during the Russian war, fighting alongside Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Masood. From drug sales and fees, "it was $680,000, just in cash." Nasir pauses. "$680,000! A lot of money, isn't it? But believe me, he [the commander] never had any intention to do anything good for me in return, ever." Nasir says all the big smuggling these days is being conducted by relatives of this top commander, some of whom are police commanders in Takhar. One relative "takes $50 per kilo to carry it from this side to that side of the border near Tajikistan. And if he catches somebody else smuggling, he takes $5,000 to $10,000 each time." Nasir says he has stopped taking drugs across the border himself, because he is too well known, but he continues to send his men to do the job instead. Instead of paying his men immediately after a successful mission, now he pays them a week later, so that competing police commanders don't discover his smuggling until it's over. "When I was a big smuggler, I had relations with the Tajik officers on the other side of the border. But my competitor has relations with the Russian KGB," he says. "[His] people have damaged my business a lot. Once I lost $500,000 of heroin, another time $600,000, another time $700,000, another time $900,000, another time $1.1 million because of [his] people." Nasir laughs. "My opponents have knocked out my 32 teeth." But as bad as things are with the powerful commander - and after an assassination attempt by the top commander against Nasir, relations are pretty bad - Nasir says he wants to be practical and keep the peace, for now. "I have a lot of proof and evidence against [the commander]," he says, "but I want to keep my relations good with him."