20000124

Large munitions caches seized

Pakistan, Iran

to block gun-running,

drug trafficking routes

LAILA A ALI

QUETTA: Pakistan and Iran have decided to block the international route for gun-running and drug trafficking via Balochistan's porous border belt.

According to official sources here on Sunday, round-the-clock vigil is maintained on the routes mostly used by drug, tycoons and gun running barons by anti-smuggling agencies on both sides of the border. Pakistani agencies Ñ Frontier Corps, Anti-Narcotic Force, Customs and Border Security Police personnel are in constant contact with their counterparts in Iran. Such contacts keep them abreast of information about the movement and marketing of drugs, arms and ammunitions by the international traffickers and tycoons right from Afghanistan, America, and European, Middle East, Gulf, Far Eastern and African countries.

As Balochistan has been serving as a soft belly for this type of illicit trade and traffic, there is concentration on the traingular Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran's Kachao area (Balochistan) bordering the three countries. Kachao, serving as a major route, is just 20 km from Zahidan (Iran) and 650 km from Quetta (Balochistan), not very far from Afgahnistan, the hub of drug manufacture and for the purchase of heavy arms and ammunitons to continue the civil war.

As a result of closer cooperation and contact between Pakistan and Iran, the Anti-Narcotic Force squad in Balochistan has seized smugglers' arms and ammunitions depot in Kachao area. The seized arms and ammunitions seemed to have been dumped at the illicit depot for smuggling into the interior of Pakistan for committing acts of sabotage and terrorism mostly in Sindh and Punjab.

The arms cache includes Russian and other foreign countries makes of machine-guns, double barrel shot guns, air guns, 303 rifles, more than 300 rounds of machine-guns, machine-gun charging boxes and Kalashnikovs.

The gun-runners had sensed raid on their depot. They went into the hideout at the raiding time to escape arrest. Anyhow, one suspect, said to be big gun-runner, has been arrested near Dalbandian, Chagai district, Balochistan. His name has been kept secret for security reasons and for the arrest of actual gun-runners and drug traffickers in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

Equally active on Pak-Afghan border is the Frontier Corps along the Balochistan belt touching the border town of Chaman, which is another international route for gun-running and drug trafficking plus smuggling of luxury items to shatter Pakistan's economy, trade and commerce.

In a raid on a train bound for Quetta from Chaman, the Frontier Corps squad has seized luxury items Ñ electronic gadgets, cosmetics, cutlery, crockery, cigarettes, cigars, cloth, and black and green tea, all of foreign make Ñ at Shala Bagh railway station near Chaman. No one was arrested because none of the passangers on board the train owned the seized items piled up at hidden places in almost each compartment of the Chaman-Quetta passenger train commonly known as 'smugglers express' for incoming and outgoing illicit items from and to Afghanistan and Pakistan.