ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 16, 1996 TAG: 9612160147
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
SOURCE: Associated Press
The West's growing heroin habit pours up to $500 million a year into the hands of some of the world's deadliest terrorists, financing kidnappings and bombings that have killed thousands, U.S. drug agents say.
The Kurdistan Workers Party, known by the initials PKK, demands protection money from heroin labs in eastern Turkey, the crossroads and processing center for Afghan heroin on its way to Europe and North America.
The PKK may even run some of the labs, say undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agents who spoke on condition of anonymity.
``For guns they need money. For money they use heroin,'' one agent said.
While more popular in Europe, heroin processed in PKK-controlled areas has made inroads into the United States, especially cities with large Middle Eastern populations, including New York, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles, the agents said.
The PKK has waged a 12-year struggle to establish an autonomous Marxist state in the Kurdish areas of Turkey - and has never shied from violence to achieve that goal. More than 21,000 people have died in fighting since the PKK started its war in 1984.
According to FBI and State Department records, the PKK committed more terrorist acts from 1991 through 1995 than any other such group in the world, attacking targets in Turkey and Western Europe.
``They're a very deadly group,'' says Joe Reap, spokesman for the State Department's anti-terrorism office. ``They perpetrate waves of attacks throughout Western Europe - they've kidnapped foreign tourists, kidnapped Americans.''
PKK terrorists regularly plant bombs in crowded areas of Istanbul, killing and maiming foreigners as well as Turks. In 1995, two suspected PKK agents died in a premature explosion while hiding bombs in a teddy bear.
Drug agents discovered the Kurdish rebels' role in heroin trafficking in part through a 24-kilogram heroin case three years ago in San Francisco. But the group's involvement probably started almost as soon as the modern heroin routes were set up in the years after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
``We were negotiating with one group that wanted to move a ton and a half a month into the United States,'' one agent said.
But it is in the eastern Turkey drug-processing labs that the PKK dominates the heroin trade.
Part of their money comes from an old-fashioned protection racket, McGivney says.
``They knock on your door, and if you're in the business, you're going to hand over a percentage of your business - or you're going to be shot,'' he says.
The DEA is working closely with European police on heroin cases, but the job has become more difficult with the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc.It hopes to clamp down on the trade in the United States before it begins to rival the success of competing heroin from Southeast Asia, Colombia and Mexico.
But stopping it isn't without risk.
Two undercover agents were negotiating a big heroin buy with a Kurdish connection when the contact stopped returning calls.
``They found him with his ears and his tongue cut off,'' an agent says. ``We never found out who did it.''
LENGTH: Medium: 65 linesby CNB