Close Encounter with Opium -- 1.9 Tons of It

How's things, music fans? Most of you have sated your inner holiday glutton (or outer, if you've eaten as much junk food as I have in the past couple of weeks), and are now moving on to the grim reality of those New Year's Resolutions. I did a decent job on my last resolution, to get into better shape (still not there yet), but want to keep improving there. More importantly, this year I pledge to be a better husband and friend to my wonderful wife, partner, and bud MaLan. This is the year where we actually will live together, so it should be an easy thing to do, in theory. We'll see if I can give up the selfishness that comes with living by yourself for the better part of 12 years!

The week before New Year's was not a holiday, however. Work has had a sense of urgency for weeks now. Basically, we have had something of an unexpected reprieve from the snow (bad news for the farmers, who need the snow melt to irrigate their crops next year, but good news for us and our construction efforts), so everyone is scurrying around trying to get that last bit of work done before snow and winter REALLY hits (again, I say this when it is -25 outside).

Of the work we've been doing, one of the more interesting was our involvement in a huge opium burn. You've probably read or heard that drugs make up most of Afghanistan's economy. That's probably true (I think the UN says 52 percent of their economy is drug-related.) Bamyan Province is not a major poppy cultivation site, but drugs do transit the province, bound for points elsewhere. At least in this one instance, the bad guys got caught in the process of loading a truck with bags of opium.

The police asked for our help. The Kiwis immediately prepared a burn site in public view but inside the outer perimeter of the base (concertina wire), to help control access to the area. The Kiwis learned the hard way they need better control of the site. When a previous contingent burned confiscated opium, the burn lasted well through the night. Much of the unburned opium was missing the following morning, however. Oops.

Officials from Kabul arrived to witness the fun and games, and, truth be told, the whole event had a circus-like atmosphere. Children hung around police HQ all day, eating fruit and sweets for sale from small vendors. Local and Kabul press milled through the crowd, interviewing anyone willing to comment on the event. The Chief of Police, a truculent character if I've ever met one, was waxing philosophic to anyone listening.

I managed to get myself into the mix. Once we opened the "sealed" container, for the next 90 minutes the Kiwis weighed, and I recorded the weight of each individual opium bag (minus the 5 --why do they need 5? -- samples we saw taken by ANP officers for "testing"). Digital and mobile phone cameras were going off like crazy. One of the local officials, recognizing a good publicity stunt, jumped up into the container and began writing Dari notations on each bag (never mind that they would all be burned, quite shortly). In all we weighed and collected 1,746.5 kg of opium. Apparently we could not burn the hash left in the container, because we did not have the proper paperwork. Any bets whether it will still be there once the paperwork is finished? We then escorted the opium back to the burn site, prepped the fuel, and gave an official an incendiary grenade to start the burn, which he brandished in front of onlookers before tossing it into the pit. It's like he thought he was Mel Gibson in Braveheart or something, or at least one of the stars of WWE (Eddie Guerrero, RIP). He did not burn himself in the process, but it was a close thing!

For the next ten hours, the Kiwi workers managed a bubbling morass of brown muck, tossing on more diesel every so often, to keep the fire rolling. The wood we chose did not cut the mustard, so it was basically a diesel and dope fire. Did it smell good? Did I get a buzz? Hell no. A headache, yeah, got that later in the day, but there was no fun involved. That stuff smelled AWFUL. (It looks like crap, and smells much, much worse). Really dreadful. You would have to be a freakin' drug addict to want to inhale anything that nasty. The smell of locals burning donkey manure for fuel smells better. I'm trying to think of the right hyperbole to give you a real sense of just how malodorous that stuff is, but words do not do justice. Your eyes water, your skin itches, your nose, well, you can guess. Seriously -- this stuff is FOUL.

Worse, even after most of the opium had burned away, and the fire was covered with earth, we had an entire night where the camp was blanketed in disgusting smoke smell. It seeped in and around the camp the way the Angel of Death visited the Hebrews in The Ten Commandmants. If I thought lamb's blood would've kept the smell out that night, I would've pissed off the cooks for sure for dragging giant lambshanks all over the camp. Not sure a frozen leg of lamb would have much effect, though.

Interesting day, all in all. If we could make a big enough dent in the opium trade, I would be willing to take more days of bad smell and drug paparazzi, but otherwise, once is enough, thanks. If I find my way to Amsterdam and somebody offers me a hashish brownie, I'll politely decline and find a regular boring brownie. With a Diet Coke chaser. More my style.