Drug Smuggling to Saudi Arabia: Money Is the Lure, Death the Reward

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia — The man was in his 60s, wore the seamless white robes of a Muslim pilgrim and had the flowing beard characteristic of the devout. One other thing: He was very nervous.

That last trait--and his Pakistani nationality--were his undoing.

Police and customs agents trying to break the flow of drugs into wealthy Saudi Arabia from desperately poor surrounding nations have come to suspect Pakistanis in particular.

When the 62-year-old Pakistani stumbled on the questions asked of all arriving religious pilgrims, he was X-rayed. Inside his body were six balloons wrapped in black tape and containing 358 grams of heroin. Street value: $250,000.

He will likely face the merciless destiny of most drug smugglers in Saudi Arabia. In a public square after Friday noon prayers, the blindfolded prisoner kneels and is beheaded by sword. In the last two years, 44 foreigners--35 of them Pakistanis--have died that way.

Still, the smugglers keep coming.

“They are drawn to Saudi Arabia because we have money here, even if it means getting beheaded,” said a drug agent who recounted the Pakistani smuggler’s arrest. “One man told me a head is worthless if you don’t have money.”

The agent agreed to discuss drug smuggling only if his name not be used, a condition set by most others interviewed about drug problems in this conservative Muslim kingdom. Under Islam, even alcohol is forbidden.

Publicly, some officials deny drug use is widespread among Saudis. But the government is becoming more concerned about the problem.

It has set up an awareness program for students and has opened hospitals named Al-Amal--Arabic for “hope”--to treat addicts. Gen. Sultan al-Harithy, head of the Saudi Drug Enforcement Agency, said the program is geared to treatment, not punishment. “People who go to Al-Amal hospitals don’t risk prosecution, interrogation or probation,” he said.

The country’s oil wealth--and its bored youth--are the temptation for drug traffickers, mostly from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Since Saudi work visas are hard to get and tourist visas nonexistent, most smugglers pose as participants in the pilgrimage to Mecca that is required at least once of every Muslim.

Of the 440 pounds of drugs confiscated last year at Jiddah’s airport, more than half was seized during Hajj--the main month of pilgrimage.

“We have found drugs hidden inside prayer beads, inside copies of the Koran [Islam’s holy book], and we’ve found prayer rugs dipped in dried heroin paste,” said a customs officer. “We arrested a Nigerian cleric for possession of drugs. Half an hour earlier, he had led us in prayers.”

The most popular drug is heroin, accounting for 84% of narcotics seized last year, followed by hashish, cocaine and opium, customs officials said.

The “mules,” or carriers, typically get free trips and advances of up to $2,000, a small fortune in their impoverished countries.

Traffickers even use entire families in an effort to throw off suspicion. In January, for instance, agents arrested a family of 19 Pakistanis, including 10 women and six children between the ages of 3 and 8, who were trying to smuggle 10 pounds of heroin.

To halt the trade, Saudi Arabia has invested in sophisticated urinalysis and X-ray machines and stepped up intelligence gathering with neighboring countries.

Under the drug awareness program, which so far is only open to boys, high school students in traditional robes and red-and-white checkered headdresses file each day into the drug agency’s Riyadh office. The students are shown narcotics and drug paraphernalia and given rulers and pens inscribed with anti-drug slogans.

But al-Harithy, head of the agency, said the main message is from Islam.

“At the end of the meeting, we distribute taped Islamic sermons to instill religious ideals into the boys and explain that taking drugs is against our religion,” he said.

Saudi Arabia is among the most strict Islamic states. Women must cover from head to toe in black and are not allowed to drive. Movie theaters are nonexistent. Men and women cannot mingle in public.

But the lack of distractions means some rich Saudi youths with plenty of free time are ideal targets for pushers.

Mazen--who asked that his last name not be used--began experimenting with drugs at 17 out of boredom and because his friends were doing it. Now he’s 25 and still lives with his parents in a villa ringed with palm trees in Jiddah.

He doesn’t work and stays up all night cruising the streets in his black Trans Am. About twice a week, Mazen smokes heroin.

“It’s only in Saudi Arabia that I do drugs,” he said. “When I travel abroad, there’s so much to do I don’t need drugs to distract me. But here, drugs are one of our few escapes.”

Others, however, say they became addicted overseas. And Youssef al-Saleh, a 38-year-old father of three, made clear in describing his addiction to the drug agency’s journal, Al-Mukafaha (Struggle), that not only rootless youths are victims of drugs.

“One day I only had 50 riyals ($13) to my name, and my wife asked me to buy milk for my son, who was crying from hunger,” he said. “I debated with myself whether to buy milk or drugs, opted for drugs and told my wife to put her finger in my son’s mouth to keep him quiet.”

Al-Saleh is now a part-time drug counselor, one of the success stories of the government treatment program. But Mazen--the young man taken with heroin and American videos--said it doesn’t always work that way.

“Our lives don’t change and our friends don’t change,” he said. “After the hospital, it’s back into the same rut.”