The revelation is alarming, in deed. Up to 53 per cent of the pupil studying in the elite private schools in Islamabad have become drug addicts. The information was given to a Committee of the Senate recently. "Pupils use drugs during study," and addicts include some "students as little as eight-year old." Fellow students, teachers, street vendors or, in some cases, school canteens served as conduits for the supply of drugs to the young addicts, who were hooked to either artificial drugs, hard drugs or heroin.

Appalled at the shocking revelation, the Senate Committee has declared war against drugs, which took lives of "hundreds of people" every day in the country "due to drug-related complications," according to a report in daily The News (October 20, 2016). To arrest the scourge of addiction, the committee has proposed that drug test should be made mandatory in educational institutions and that television channels should devote 0.5 per cent of their air time to raise awareness about the devastating effects of drug addiction.

History is replete with instances where inimical powers have used drugs as weapons of war to demoralise their opponents and sap their fighting capabilities. To achieve the twin-objectives, the Soviets encouraged the Vietcong to pedal drugs amongst the US troops in Vietnam.

Drug money has also been used for fanning terrorism, raising troops and keeping them battle worthy or using them for capturing territories. For example, Afghan regions, where opium poppy is being cultivated, either happen to be in turmoil or under the control of the Taliban.

Following Mao-led revolution in China (1948), the American CIA encouraged Kuomintang general Li, who had escaped to the Golden Triangle area (regions bordering Burma, Laos and Thailand) with 12,000 troops, to cultivate opium poppy and use the drug money for keeping his troops battle worthy and recapturing mainland China. One of the former directors of CIA has written an exclusive chapter on these events in a book published by him post-retirement.

In recent times, the ‘narco-politics’ made inroads in Pakistan and Afghanistan in late 1970s (coinciding the overthrow of Daud government in Afghanistan in 1978) as a result of American CIA’s covert activities. The actual drama started when, in April 1979, CIA and the Afghan resistance groups started working together, eight months before the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Thereafter, according to Gerald Segal, author of book ‘The World Affairs Companion,’ the Afghan war against the Soviet troops was, in part, funded by rebels in the heroin trade.

In his book "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade," A.W. McCoy writes: "The growing opium cultivation in Burma and Afghanistan -- America’s major suppliers -- was largely the product of CIA’s own doings. Although the US maintained a substantial force of DEA agents in Islamabad during 1980s, the unit was restrained by the US national security imperatives and did almost nothing.

It may be noted that before the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, opium production in Pakistan and Afghanistan was negligible and the local production was mostly consumed by both the countries for quasi-medicinal purposes. However, now the abuse of narcotic drugs has become endemic, and for want of dedicated efforts it continues to rise at an alarming rate in the whole of the country and more so in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) where the scourge has reportedly afflicted 13 per cent of the population.

The details about CIA’s covert operations are startling. J. Cooley, author of book ‘Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism’ writes: After his inauguration in January 1981, President Reagan met Alexander de Marenches, head of the French Secret Foreign Intelligence Service SDEC, in the Oval office. The Count had suggestion for a Franco-American venture to counter the Soviet threat in Afghanistan. "Operation Mosquito" entailed using confiscated drugs precisely as the Vietcong did with the US army in Vietnam: secretly, supply the Soviet forces with illicit drugs in order to demoralise them and dissipate their fighting ability. The Count claimed to be in contact with ‘bright young journalists who could facilitate this at a cost of just $1 million. The President agreed, and instructed the CIA chief to pursue the idea. Two days later the Count met CIA chief Casey, who ‘loved’ this idea and sought France’s assistance in return for the Agency putting the cash. The Count agreed but only on the condition that Casey would guarantee that his own name and that of France would not be mentioned in published articles. Casey could not guarantee it because Washington ‘leaked like a sieve.’

After France’s withdrawal from the deal, three years later, Casey raised the issue with Pakistan President General Zia-ul-Haq, who was hesitant. Casey then reportedly contacted a leading Mujahideen leader through the office of a French journalist where he received a more enthusiastic response, resulting in the supply of funds and technical expertise to facilitate establishment of heroin factories.

"Interestingly, before these activities, the USA had waged three ‘Wars on Drugs’ -- by President Nixon in 1972, by President Reagan in 1986 and by President George Bush in 1991. Since then, direct US intervention in foreign countries had been predicated on controlling narcotics supply, but when it came to Afghanistan, immediately after the US attack, the White House ordered that opium harvest may not be destroyed as that would weaken and destabilise the military government of an allied neighbouring country," writes Michel Chossudovsky in his book ‘Global War on Terrorism: Part II’.

Before the US intervention in Afghanistan, following a single verdict by Mulla Umar regime forbidding cultivation of opium, the production had declined by 95 per cent and reduced to only 185 metric tonnes of raw opium in 2001. Now, Afghanistan has become one of the leading suppliers of the crop.

The northern alliance, which was supported by the US, produced drugs to procure arms for its armed struggle, earlier against the Taliban and the al-Qaeda and now to retain its power base. In a detailed report on the drug trade by the warlords of the Northern Alliance, the Daily Mail (London) reported that the warlords exported not opium but heroin, which they prepared on a massive scale not in old kitchen tubs but in proper factories.

The UK, US and Germany helped the Uzbek Customs Centre at Termez in installing the most sophisticated detection and screening equipment but, according to some British diplomats, the convoys of jeeps running Afghan supplies bypassed the screening equipment. Once it entered Uzbekistan, the heroin was trafficked to St. Petersburg and Riga.

The Afghanistan narcotics trade soon spread its tentacles to all the neighbouring countries. In Pakistan, which had no heroin addict till 1979, the menace grew alarmingly, and it has now become endemic.

Heroin addiction and drug money fuel law and order problem, unemployment and allowed ethnic/sectarian extremist groups to arm themselves, affecting the politics and economies of the entire region. It has been crippling societies, distorting the economies of the already fragile states and creating a "new narco-elite," which has been at odds with the ever-increasing poverty of the population. In fact, drugs now determine the politics of this region as never before.

While poppy production is a source of income for farmers, the manufacture and trade in opiates is believed to be creating huge illegal incomes and profits for drug dealers, who use smuggling as a means of laundering illegal drug money. To launder their narco-dollars, initially they (narco dealers) switched over to the Bara type business and later erected shopping centres, residential colonies and even medical centres."

Recent efforts to combat opium production in Afghanistan have been marred by corruption in that country and have failed to prevent the consolidation of the drugs trade in the hands of fewer powerful players with strong political connections, according to a joint report titled ‘Afghanistan Drug Industry: Structure, Functioning, Dynamics and Implication for Counter-Narcotics Policy," jointly prepared by the World Bank and the UN Office on Drug and Crime in November 2006.

About increase in the production and abuse of deadly narcotic drugs, like heroin, political analysts assert that the drug production and trafficking would never come to an end unless the ‘real politics’ of the mighty nations came to an end.

The situation is challenging. Countries like Pakistan need to gear efforts to get rid of the menace of addiction by raising awareness about the hazards of drug abuse, making foolproof arrangements to stop the inflow of drugs, awarding deterrent punishment to drug pushers and smugglers or their accomplices in the enforcement agencies who unwittingly become enemy agents, and making arrangements for the treatment and rehabilitation of the drug addicts.