Pakistan's Bargain With The Devil

An excerpt from, “How Pakistan Got Hooked on the Drug Trade” By Natiq Malikzada, The National Interest, June 9, 2026:

Within Afghanistan, methamphetamine is produced from a wild plant locally known as Yama or Waman, plants within the family known as Ephedra. The family of plants can be found widely in Afghanistan and serve as an alternative to opium. (The chemical compound pseudoephedrine, an anticongestant used as the base ingredient in illicit methamphetamine production, is found naturally in Ephedra plants, but is typically chemically synthesized for mass production for the pharmaceutical industry.)

Unlike the opium poppy, Ephedra cultivation is not monitored by the UN or other international organizations, so it is unknown how abundant it is. While the plant offers a solid foundation and provides a unique form of methamphetamine, it is somewhat difficult to extract pseudoephedrine from it, requiring vast quantities of harvested plant material for comparatively little base drug material. Accordingly, drug producers in Afghanistan have shifted to laboratory methods, using industrial-grade ephedrine or pseudoephedrine to mix with Ephedra plants in order to offset high production costs. According to Samiullah, methamphetamine production, like opium-processing laboratories, is taking place across the southwestern provinces, and many high-ranking Taliban members have used it as a source of revenue. Factories processing methamphetamine are known to be located in the provinces of Helmand, Farah, Nimroz, Uruzgan, Kandahar, and Zabul, each with local officials taking a cut.

“The widespread export of this drug by traffickers mostly takes place through Pakistan, and many in the Pakistani army are involved in this business,” Samiullah added. “Without the help and cooperation of Pakistani officials, from border authorities to deep government agencies, it would not be possible for it to continue to the extent it does now.”

. . .Yet Pakistan’s central role in the drug trade is undeniable. Throughout 2024, India seized 2,596 kg (5,723 lb) of heroin nationwide, with Punjab alone accounting for 1,150 kg (2,535 lb), much of it connected to Pakistan-border trafficking and drone drops. During one high-profile seizure in March, the Coast Guard in Gujarat arrested six Pakistani men after intercepting a boat that had sailed from Pakistan loaded with drugs worth tens of millions of dollars. In 2025, India’s Border Security Force reported seizing hundreds of drones coming from Pakistan into Punjab to drop heroin. And as recently as May 2026, the Indian Coast Guard in Gujarat seized 100 kilograms of cocaine off the Kutch coast after intercepting a ship that had arrived from Port Qasim in Pakistan.

In short, Pakistan has never abandoned the old model of using the drug business for geopolitical ends, but has increasingly needed to intervene when its own people are affected. As with Islamist extremism, which Pakistan sought to nurture as a weapon against its enemies before it found itself in the crosshairs, Islamabad may have created a monster it can no longer control.