Afghan drug smugglers use giant slingshot to beat Iran border wall

In Mexico drug dealers spend millions on complex tunnels to get their gear to market. In Afghanistan it’s far simpler than that.

A group of Afghan smugglers have been filmed lobbing their contraband across the border into Iran with the aid of a giant, home-made slingshot, in a scene that would not look out of place in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

The video, believed to have been taken in Nimroz province, shows the catapult in a trench and manned by six men. One loads while two others stretch the sling’s rubber belt, before a parcel is seen shooting into the air and into Iran.

Drug enforcement experts say that smugglers use slingshots to defeat a 35-mile long border wall built by Iran to try to prevent drug traders operating from Zaranj, the provincial centre of Nimroz. They say that their use stretches back years but their methods have improved.

“Made of metal and around one and a half metres in height these slingshots are inserted into a concrete base and can fire a 1kg package a distance of up to 300 metres, said David Mansfield, an author and socio-economic expert on Afghanistan drug cartels and the Taliban’s murky finances.

 “They serve as a way of reducing both the costs and dangers of smuggling drugs into Iran.

“Typically a team can use a slingshot to propel up to 100kg across the border during a single sitting. While large amounts of drugs are smuggled into Iran directly across this border using a variety of different methods like slingshots, far greater amounts would seem to be trafficked south into Pakistan via vehicle, where they are then cross decked and moved onto Iran.”

Nimroz, a southwestern province bordering both Iran and Pakistan, has over the years been a key drug route. Iranian border security consisting of barbed wire fencing, concrete barriers and border patrols have done little to stop it.

Afghanistan is the world biggest producer and distributor of illegal opium. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that only 15 per cent of the world’s opium is produced outside Afghanistan. According to the office’s report in 2021 opium contributes almost $2 billion to the Afghan economy, and most of the heroin produced from this opium ends up being sold in European cities.