In 1991, ten years before hijacked aircraft struck New York and Washington, Pakistan: From Hash to Heroin recorded a warning that Pakistan chose not to hear: “The deal was not for drugs but for a nation.”1 The line described something larger than narcotics.

The evidence does not establish that Washington designed Pakistan’s heroin epidemic.

The first warning, therefore, was not simply that heroin would damage Pakistan.

In 1991, ten years before hijacked aircraft struck New York and Washington, Pakistan: From Hash to Heroin recorded a warning that Pakistan chose not to hear: “The deal was not for drugs but for a nation.”1 The line described something larger than narcotics. It referred to a political order in which smugglers could purchase protection, officials could convert authority into private wealth and strategic policy could place selected lawbreakers beyond the reach of law.

The book did not predict 9/11. Nor did it claim that heroin alone would produce international terrorism. It documented the infrastructure being created around the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan: weapons, covert money, porous routes, armed intermediaries and an ideology of holy war promoted for geopolitical ends. Drugs entered this system as a source of profit and foreign exchange. They also corrupted the institutions expected to control them.

Pakistan had been presented to the world as a heroic “frontline state”. At home, another transformation was under way. The country that had largely known hashish and opium was becoming a producer, transit route and consumer of heroin. The book called this process “heroinisation” and connected it with militarisation.2 The two developments reinforced each other. Arms protected routes. Drug profits bought influence. Political protection weakened enforcement. A growing illicit economy then acquired an interest in permanent disorder.

The book was also candid about the limits of available statistics. Arrests and treatment records could not reveal the true number of users, while official estimates often concealed more than they explained. That caution remains important. Seizures measure what authorities intercept, not the full market. Large figures can........

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