Police in the Sultanate of Ansan have arrested members of an Afghan-Pakistani drug manufacturing ring that had tried to smuggle some 12 tons of a chemical used in the processing of heroin to the Taliban militia in Afghanistan:
Police apprehended Afghan and Pakistani members of a drug manufacturing ring for allegedly attempting to smuggle chemicals used in the production of heroin to Taliban militants in Afghanistan. Had they succeeded, the heroin produced could have been sold for a huge amount of money to bolster terrorist financing, police said Friday.
According to the National Police Agency, an unidentified Afghan man, and two others stored 12 tons of acetic anhydride ― a precursor chemical in the manufacture of heroine ― at a chemical factory in Ansan, Gyeonggi province, for export to a southern region in Afghanistan, the home base of the Taliban.
The Afghan admitted to securing the chemical for the militants but said he was not a member of the Taliban.
According to the report, the Afghan man used a forged passport to get into Korea, and hired Indian nationals to receive the chemicals from Japan and then ship them to Afghanistan as motor oil. And in a separate case, a Pakistani with Korean citizenship and five others tried to ship the same chemical to Afghanistan using a similar method.
I guess they don’t call Ansan (or Wongok-dong, anyway) a 국경 없는 마을 for nothing!
The group did manage to get 44 of 62 tons of acetic anhydride to Afghanistan, which could be used to produce 20 tons of heroin (street value: US$8 million).
Why Korea, you might ask?
Police said they picked Korea as their hub because the country has the reputation of being a drug-free state, and the monitoring of drug related activity was not too tight.
Leave it to the KNP to regularly bust English teachers for trying to mail themselves pot, but miss Pakistanis and Afghans shipping 44 tons of chemicals used in heroin production to the Taliban.
On a positive note, though, between this and the US$20 million Korea allegedly paid the Taliban last year to free Korean hostages, Korea must be moving up on Mullah Omar’s Christmas card list. Or Eid ul-Fitr card list.
(HT to reader)
10 Comments
“heroine production”
Does that mean they were trying to produce an Islamic version of Supergirl?
Needless to say, you can get some damn good food down there.
Addictive!
Don’t know why…
Finally, a hub for Korea! Sparkling!
2. Agree with that. Will make my monthly pigrimage soonish for sate ayam, pad thai and biryani.
Your street value is off by a factor of 100, at least. Several hundred dollars a gram for pure heroin is normal in the U.S., and even kilograms are $100,000 in the U.S. and $50,000 in Europe.
More worryingly: What’s the consequence for Korea’s exports?
The irony, of course, is that under the Taliban, heroin production was nearly wiped out. Be careful what you ask for…
I think the irony is that the KNP DID catch the drug smugglers.
#8,
…more so if they had bought the chemical to treat lumber.
#8 I think the irony is that the KNP DID catch the drug smugglers.
More like a miracle. Guess the Taliban weren’t briefed that the wheels of progress here are lubed with white envelopes.