The Underworld Podcast - The Heroin Warlord of Pakistan: Armed Tribesman, the CIA, & a Smuggling Empire

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

5000 armed tribesman at his beck and a call. A mountain compound in a lawless territory. A seat in Pakistan’s parliament bought and paid for. And a heroin and hash empire that stretched from the mountains of Afghanistan to million dollar mansions in Long Island. Ayub Afridi started life as a poor, illiterate truck driver in a mud hut and turned a trucking company into a global drug trafficking operation. And once the Soviet Union went to war with Afghanistan, his control of Pakistan’s tribal areas perfectly positioned him to become a kingmaker. The guns went up in his trucks, the the opium came down to be refined into heroin that would stretch across the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes the hardest part of car shopping is knowing where to start. I remember the last time I was looking for a vehicle. It didn't take long before I was comparing specs and prices and wondering if I was actually looking at a good deal. That's why I love car gurus. Their new guru search lets you describe exactly what you're looking for in plain English, and it finds listings that actually fit what you need. It's no wonder car gurus is the number one rated car shopping app in Canada

on the Apple App and Google Play Store. Whether you're after a practical daily driver, something with room for road trips, or a sporty weekend ride, Car Gurus gives you hundreds of thousands of listings from top-rated dealers, along with deal ratings, price history, dealer reviews, and alerts when prices drop or new listings appear. So you can shop with confidence. Buy your next car gurus at Car Gurus.ca. Go to Car Gurus.ca.coma to make sure your big deal is the best deal. That's C-A-R.

G-U-R-U-S-D-C-A. Kar-Gurus. Ready to take your investing knowledge to pro-level? This is Fidelity Connects, your daily edge in the markets. Get deep insights on real-time market topics that may impact your investment portfolio. Listen to Fidelity Connects on Spotify today and power your next move tomorrow. January 2nd, 1991, the Khyber Pass, Pakistan. It's winter on one of the most famous smuggling roads on Earth,

and a reporter is standing at a gate. Behind him is the pass. Mud houses rock, the road that runs from Peshawar up through the mountains and drops into Afghanistan. The road Alexander the Great is set to have used. The road, the British bled on, the road that has moved silk and guns and armies throughout history. And in this current era, drugs. Heroin, hashish, massive amounts. Likely more heroin than any other road on the planet.

Ahead of the reporter is a 25-foot brick wall that can, goes on for 40 acres. This is what you call a compound, one that would put your average narco to shame. It's more of a village, really. A guard with a Kalishnikov lets the journalist in, friendly as a bellhop. Come see the zoo at the guard says. So they go see the zoo. A rose-line walkway, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, an apple orchard, marble buildings, fountains, guesthouses, and then the zoo itself, which is mostly just peacocks, canaries, turkeys, and chickens. A collection the visiting reporter sizes up and decides isn't actually that impressive. On the porch is a mortar launcher and four artillery cannons,

the kind used in the tribal blood feuds that have kicked off here for centuries. With no real government or police, matters are settled the old way. And under nearby tarps, two brand-new Mercedes sedans, never driven gifts for a political ally. The guards line, word for word, the mileage is zero. They're a present. The man who owns this house cannot read his own name. He is an illiterate truck driver from a mudwall town at the top of this pass.

Now, he owns the largest private residence most visitors have ever laid eyes on, in one of the poorest places on earth. He's also got a tribal army, several thousand armed men who answer to him and to no government anywhere. And a product line, hashish by the freighter load and heroin, out of a tribal belt that has gone in a single decade, from zero heroin labs to 100, maybe 200, in this one small area alone, feeding Europe, feeding America,

feeding a smuggling network that stretches all the way to the mansions of Log Island, where New York City's hedge fund managers and top lawyers leave. We'll get to that in episode two, and it's going to blow your mind. But for now, this man in Pakistan, they say, has a revolutionized heroin production. His name is Ayuba Fridi, who many call the Pablo Escobar of Pakistan.

Two months before this tour, he's elected to Pakistan's National Assembly, the parliament, just like Escobar did in Colombia, though he was kicked out after a year or two and only elected as an alternate. A leaked CIA commission study will crown a Fridi the king of Kaibir heroin. The DA will call his organization in an official cable the single most prolific heroin in Hashis trafficking, operation in the entire country, which might not sound like much, but during this period, Pakistan is the number two heroin exporter in the world behind Burma. And he built it all from nothing. From poverty, the average person couldn't fathom in one of the most lawless places on earth. But there's still more to come, a sealed American indictment, a siege in which 5,000 of his

armed tribesmen move into the garden and wait the government out. And then the strangest third act, in the history of the drug war. This man will negotiate his own surrender with the DEA, by telephone, from his mountain fortress, fly himself to Brooklyn and business class, do his time, come home, get sentenced to death in Pakistan, and the story goes, get quietly pulled out of it after September 11th because American intelligence wanted the old warlords' networks in the fight against the Taliban. He will die of a heart attack at home, in bed, under an active death sentence, and be buried in a village that is named after him.

And we still haven't even mentioned the Soviets, the Mujahideen, the CIA, and all of that. Oh, and in case that wasn't enough, next week, we're going to hear the never-told story of one of his American operations. About a small-town New York boy who had barely 30 years old ventured the tribal Pakistan in the midst of the war to shake hands with the drug lord and become the biggest drug trafficker in New England's history at the time. It's like the movie Blow mixed with the Wolf of Wall Street. This is the Underworld podcast. Welcome back to the Underworld podcast, the show where two journalists who have reported on organized crime all over the world

and who have both personally been inside of at least one compound, we probably should not have been inside of, bring you a new story of international organized crime every single week. I'm Danny Gold. Here as always with Sean Williams, who has been hearing me talk about this three-parter I've been working on

for quite some time now. Now, Aya Bafridi is one thing. He's a known notorious guy, and let me tell you, first time in a while I've done some like really deep dives. But next week's episode, or I think probably two weeks from now,

this is a story, like there's no magazine piece ever been done on it, no long form actually ever, I think, no feature, no, it's not a movie, no one's ever done a YouTube video about it. There's no video reports, no podcast, no DJ Vlad interview, anything like that. There's like a trial, some small newspaper daily coverage, but I don't think anyone has ever put it together until now.

But we start with Ayuba Fridi in Pakistan. Yes, I am reading about it. It is nuts. But I mean, I'm just as pumped about Pakistani smack king pins in the cover past, to be honest. I always wanted to go there. It's still a crazy place now, right? Yeah, I would probably avoid there with your skin tones and whatnot and accents. But you know, you're a smooth guy.

You can pull things off. And yeah, I mean, I don't think, not to continually hype us up, but I don't think anyone's ever put the Free Story together as well as we just had in this episode, a little bit next episode, and then part three as well, bringing it all home. But, you know, it's a little different because he's been, he's like a YouTube name or Google him, whatever stuff comes up. It's a Wikipedia entry, all that sort of stuff. But there's other stuff for the next one.

Nothing else out there. Anyway, I'm going to stop with our own sort of. of like self-hype machine. Before anything else, Patreon.com, says to the Norwell podcast, bonus episodes, interviews, are undying gratitude, all for basically a mediocre price of coffee. You can also get the bonus stuff on Spotify and on iTunes. Please follow us on Spotify. There's merch at underworldpod.com. And if you've got tips, stories, connections, or you happen to, or corrections, or you happen to be a retired DEA agent who worked in Islamabad in the 80s, in the 80s, Islamabad and 90s, the email is the underworld podcast at gmail.com. Seriously on that last one.

Yeah, I mean, there's probably five guys doing exactly that now in podcasts who were there at that time doing that work. Oh, awesome. YouTube, leave comments. Apparently, like, all that matters about getting paid in YouTube is like the comments. So just argue in the comments, say inflammatory things, do it for us. Or just leave nice comments. Either way, leave comments on the YouTube. So, part one today, the Khyber Pass, the tribe, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and how a truck driver ended up with. the fortress and a seat in parliament and also a giant heroin and hostage empire. Part two, the American end of his pipeline, which involves a Long Island mystery man with 16 aliases and a seven-man police department in Rhode Island. Part three, the ending in which a fugitive drug lord negotiates his own surrender with the DEA by phone from a fortress, flies himself to Brooklyn in business class, then gets released to take on the Taliban.

It's just what happens, man. Now, let us slow down a second. I'm getting over-excited and overstimulated. I'm going to take a deep breath. We're going to set the scene in those tribal areas of Pakistan. Harsh, semi-arid mountain country, rocky outcroppings, not a great place for producing anything but blood feuds. It's been home to a smuggler culture for centuries,

with routes honed by the powerful and heavily armed tribes that inhabit the region. The drug trade has flourished there. Some hash, but mostly opium, later refined to heroin by mobile labs that move around the mountains. It's provided jobs in a place where there are not that many jobs, money where the people live in hopeless poverty.

Because the thing about the opium industry is it's at once like an incredibly destabilizing force, but unfortunately it's also a stabilizing force in places like this. It has also provided hundreds of millions, if not billions of all dollars for all sorts of less than desirabontides, warlords, drug lords, insurgents, rebels, U.S. allies, U.S. enemies, and yes, the Taliban. We got to go back, though, friends, back to the 4th century BC when Alexander the Great is credited with bringing opium poppies to the region despite him not conquering it. Maybe because he was, you know, dipping into his own supply, maybe made him a little lazy. Who can know these things?

Arab traders are also said to have spread it into what's now India in the 7th century, but it doesn't really pop up as a crop being grown in Afghanistan in that area until about the 18th century, according to Robert Draper in a 2011 article in that geo. Though it's easily grown in what's known as the Golden Crescent, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Iran has had opium growth and usage since I think the 11th century. This is funny because if you don't normally listen to this show, that's the bit that I do. I'm like, let's learn about the Andrangetta in Italy. But before that, we're going to go back to like the Cretaceous period in Patagonia at the time of the dinosaurs when this all started. So I'm glad that you're getting on ball with my kind of story. offended because most of this is crib for my old Afghanistan episode. I've been doing this too.

I just sometimes don't go as far back or as academic as you do because I want our listeners to keep listening. I'm just kidding. Sean's wonderful, guys, wonderful. Anyway, the UN office on drugs and crime says there's some evidence it was a traditional crop in Afghanistan and this area from the 18th century on, though not a wide-scale cash crop. But not much happens with it until the middle of the 20th century. For example, in 1932, Afghanistan produces 75 tons of opium, but China produces 6,000 tons. Things have actually slowed down so by the mid-50s.

It's only 12 tons, and there's kind of a ban, but it's not really enforced. reason I'm talking about Afghanistan here, even though this is an episode of Pakistan, is this is the area right on the border with it. And there's a lot of sort of cross-pollination and that sort of stuff. Now, the Khyber Pass runs about 30-some miles from the edge of Peshawar in Pakistan, up through the Spingar Mountains and down into Afghanistan, towards Jalalabad and eventually Kabul. For most of recorded history, it has been the land route between Central Asia and the subcontinent. Persians came through it. Alexander the Great, as I mentioned, came through it, the Mughals, the Sikhs, the British, everybody came to the Kaver, and almost everybody paid for the privilege because the past was never really, it's never really belonged to any empire. It belongs to the tribes who live on it. For centuries, the arrangement under whatever flag was nominally flying, was basically the same. The tribes let you pass and you make it worth their while. And if you want the road, you pay the road. And at the top of the pass, near the Afghan border, sets a town called Landi Kotal, which is where our guy is from. And Afridi is,

is not just the name, it's a tribe. One of the big postune tribes of the Khyber region, and there are millions of Afridis. I think there's also, Sean, giving you a little softball here, a famous cricketer named Afridi, right? Yeah, Shai de Freedy, legend. One of my heroes growing up, changed the game entirely. The YouTube Jared Kimber calls him a time traveler,

but yeah, there are other Afridis. There's one playing on the Pakistani side now. I don't know if they're related, but from what you're saying, probably not or maybe they all are. I don't know. I just keep talking about cricket. Please don't.

It's the same plan. So I guess whatever, however related, you want to say that. When Pakistan is created in 1947, it inherits the British system for this region more or less intact. And the British system was, we do not govern this place. It's lawless, you could say, but I guess the tribes have laws. And the tribal areas along the Afghan frontier were basically autonomous agencies. Pakistani law for most of the story, it applies like, literally on the road itself and like not off the road,

not much past its shelters. Off the road, it is tribal jurisdiction, tribal councils, tribal enforcement, which is crazy because you could be like, uh, on the road and,

and I don't know, it's very confusing me, but that's the way it is. The Northwest Frontier's Tribal belt writes the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn was, quote, an area in which the legitimate Pakistani government had no authority,

an area into which Americans in official positions were prohibited from entering. So American officials, not allowed to go there. DEA agent station in Pakistan could literally stand on the road, look up at the hills, and that was it. In part three, that is going to prove to be an issue. Yeah, I was looking back, because at first, when you said you were going to do this, I was like, I'm sure, did you ever read the book at the Atomic Bazaar by Langavisha? That's a really cool book. I was like, I'm sure he set some of that in the car past, but he didn't, but I did read some pretty cool writing over the years, including like a 1952 Harper's article, was this just British guy wandering?

and around the place, which is basically what I do for a living. And it was pretty mad. Even back then, I don't think it's ever been a very normal place that cover past. No, no, that's still not normal. So what do you do for a living in a mountain economy with thin soil, no industry, and a legal system that stops at the edge of the asphalt? You trade. And because every border creates a price difference,

and every price difference is a business plant or an arbitrage opportunity, as the hustlers on Instagram like to say, you smuggle. smuggling in the Khyber Pass, it's not seen as like a gangster thing, right? It is the economy. It's been that way for generations and generations. Clothes, tires, electronics, cigarettes, appliances, gold. Whatever costs more on one side of the line than the other moves through the pass. And the men who move it are not hiding.

Like, they're prominent. They build the big houses. They fund the mosque. They are functionally like the Chamber of Commerce for the entire region. It's kind of like our old border town stick, except different, but, you know, the same. but because it was seen as legitimate and the tribes govern themselves doesn't mean things don't get messy

buddy they get messy this is a land of like blood feuds that run for generations of every adult man armed as a matter of dress code clan wars fought over land and honor and water life is cheap there uh it's just the truth it's mountains societies man we've talked about this just the whole book on mountain societies are just uh

yeah they get after Takastanis, Georgians, wild men. Yeah, yeah. And another thing that is cheap there is opium. It's grown in the valleys, sold openly in the market towns, smoked in the dens. It's a traditional crop in a region that never much cared about the legalities of such. What did not exist here for a long time, and this distinction is important, was heroin. The labs, the chemistry, the industrial product, exporting to the world market was not really a thing for a very long time.

Enter the 60s and 70s. and the people at the sort of start of all issues in our modern world. Dirty, dirty hippies. The hippie trail, the great overland stoner pilgrimage from Europe through Iran and Afghanistan to India, puts like 5 or 6,000 Western kids in nearby Kabul, Afghanistan at a time. They're buying carpets. They're fining themselves. I'm sure there were orgies.

They're sampling the finest hash grown on the planet Earth because like tons of hash goes there too. And I'm not going to lie to you, Sean. the hippie trail does actually sound kind of awesome. You know, like it does sound fun. I'm like, probably didn't smell great, but what a world. What a world to travel through and live in.

Like, I at least got to experience backpacking in Southeast Asia before Instagram and social media, but doing this sort of thing in the 60s and 70s must have been incredible. Seriously, even with hippies. Yeah,

I traveled around Eastern Europe. And I remember like logging on to Facebook on, like massive PCs in hostels. and it was so much better, man. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yeah, God, I missed those days. I mean, thinking back, like, I went to Nepal, what, in 2022, we did a whole doco episode on it. I was learning about the hippie trail back then.

The guys, the guys getting high and fooling around with each other in our stores. Very fun. However, Palo Coelho driving around and talking about mystics, not so fun. One of the worst books I've read. Yeah, just give with the guys who want to get high and have a nice time. I wouldn't be a... learning much of weight out there. Yeah.

Dude, it was Facebook in internet cafes, and it wasn't Facebook like it is now. You could just send a couple messages. So you'd message like a girl and be like, oh, I'm going here, meet me there,

and you'd have no idea if they saw it. And you'd just have to go, you know, take a six-hour bus and just hope it worked out. Sometimes it did. I've got no photos from my backpacking because I have some photos. I got high and got robbed in a club.

So that's it. You take out the digital camera and yeah, yeah, I still have those somewhere. Now, it was extremely groovy for the hippie visitors in the visitor districts. They were just passing through, maybe hanging out, but the tribes went right on feuding around them. And the pilgrims went home with two things, fond memories and a taste. Western demand for the region's hash, it did not get built.

It didn't have to be built in the 80s. It was pre-installed by guys named like Sunbeam and Moonbeam a decade earlier who talked about it nonstop when they got home to California or went back to their undergris. undergrad universities. But as a general life rule, we all know one thing is true and certain. You never follow a hippie to a second location,

which brings us to what happens and it brings us to the man at the center of this episode. Ayuba Fridi is born around 1938. He's born into the Zaha Kel, which I'm sure I'm mispronouncing, one of the storied clans of the Afridi tribe, the clan that historically

sat right on the past and made its living from it, sometimes by guarding caravans and sometimes by being the reason caravans needed guarding. He's from Landi Kotal, the market town at the top. He never learns to read or write, supposedly. Everything he later builds the empire of logistics and business is based on memory, kinship, and trust enforced the old way. As a young man, he drives trucks on the pass, and that job in that place is its own education.

You got convoys and checkpoints, armed escorts, T-stop diplomacy, knowing which elder takes his cutting cash, which one takes. it in favors, which one takes in a product, moving other men's cargo through country, where a wrong word starts a feud and a feud outlives everyone in it. I mean, it's no wonder he becomes the eventual bossman, right? What's a better way to figure out how to build a factory than working on the floor of one? I just made that up. Like, that could be a real saying, right? Yeah. It's very, well done. Made that up writing this. Did you want me to give you a little clap then? Or is that? That's pretty good, right? Like, as a metaphor? That's solid. That's solid.

That's good work. Well, well done. Yeah, okay. Congrats. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, his family is a trucking family. They have a company, and when the feds finally map his heroin logistics, it will look exactly

like a trucking company's organizational chart. He soon graduates as a young man from driving cargo to owning it. By the 60s and 70s, he's in the gold business with a partner named Iqbala Beig, an older kind of mentor type. He's a Lahore operator who ends up becoming a major business partner. He's a Lahore operator. Be careful there. Lahore?

Lahore. Yeah. Lahore. What was I saying? I just want to be clear on the pronunciation there, just in case anyone thinks he does a different job. Anyway, that means he's a big city guy, right? It's going to be very important for a free-de, who, you know, by all accounts.

It's like a redneck mountain guy to have one of these guys on his side. Gold smuggling to Pakistan in that era, I think gold smuggling in general, let's be honest, is a serious high margin trade. The record on these decades for Fridi is thin, you know, from his birth to the late 70s, the documentation is close to zero. What he tells people eventually decades later is that he made his fortune selling crockery, like dishes, which if you've ever had a girlfriend tell you she wants one of those lecrucette pots, you know what I'm talking about? It actually seems plausible that you can make hundreds of millions of dollars smuggling those. But alas, it is not true in this case. The man's position, more or less to his grave, is that he is a plate magnate.

crockery of shit. Oh wait, wait, wait, wait. I got one more. That is a, a bullshit story. Do you like that? Is that good? No. No, it's not. Okay. Deep breath again. Yeah. Now, Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back-to-school season. Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's sliced deli-meat products for always 375. And get life brand pure Vita shampoo or conditioner for $8 each. At Real Canadian Superstore, when you're ready, we're ready with a whole world and more.

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. that's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. Overwhelmed by investing. If you're anything like us, the hardest part is getting started.

That's why we created the Investing for Beginners podcast. Our goal is to help simplify money so it can work for you. We invite guests to demystify investing. At least like the minimum 10% into the 401k. I'm Dave Ahern. And I'm Andrew Sather. And we hope you join us on the Investing for Beginners podcast. on the Investing for Beginners podcast.

Let's jump ahead. Shake down 1979. Cool kids do not have the time. That's when everything happens. For a couple of reasons. First, Iran. Because before 1979, the heroin ended this region's opium economy, lived mostly on the Iranian side of the border.

That's the heroin, you know, where they're making it, not growing it. A lot of action in Iran at this time. That's where the labs and the cooks were who turned the region's opium, whether it was Iranian, Afghan, Pakistani into morphine base and heroin. Then the Islamic Revolution happens. The New Order treats the drug trade as a capital offense, and that means dealers go in front of firing scots, so to users, buy the hundreds. And the industry does what industries do under hostile regulation.

It just completely relocates. Iranian and Baluch traffickers physically pick up their labs, and I mean that literally, right? These are mobile operations, pots and presses and chemicals, chemists too, and they cart them east across the border, to Pakistani Balochistan. Pakistan, which at the start of 1979, has essentially no heroin industry, imports one overnight the way a town imports a factory.

Yeah, I guess it's good to mention at this point that Balochistan is like a huge region, right? And it like crosses over the borders of Iran and Pakistan. And there's a lot of fighting in the Pakistani side. I think there's a lot of like repression over there in the mind. Still, right? Yeah. And the Iranian side still.

There's separatists all over the place there. Yeah, yeah. Also, note, like in the 7. these, you have Turkey banning opium due to U.S. pressure. That happens in 1972. And a drought hits Burma and Thailand's Golden Triangle. So those are two of the major producers. And what you get is a wide open market.

The second and bigger thing that happens in 1979 is Christmas Eve. The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. Three million refugees come over the passes into Pakistan. And the Soviets are just hammering the country of Afghanistan, brutally destroying the infrastructure, the economy, agricultural crops, everything. Mind you, it was already a poor country that needed serious development and aid. But here you've got rural farmers, had grown pistachios, almonds, grapes, pomegranes, even cotton.

But that's kind of hard to keep going in the middle of a relentless bombing campaign where farms are destroyed, livestock killed, all that. Part of the Soviet strategy was to starve the Mujahideen and their supporters, so they deliberately went after crops and these things. Mujahideen, the fighters that were from Afghanistan, I think all very religious, right? Or would that just mean fighter at that point? Yeah, I don't know enough. I don't think they were like Islamists per se, but they, I mean, I don't know.

I think it was divided somewhere in some. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it wasn't, yeah. From a 2009 Gretchen Peters paper, quote, the Soviet scorched earth policy destroyed thousands of acres of farmland and sent millions of refugees over the border to Iran and Pakistan, leaving fewer people to work in the remaining arable fields. Yeah.

So you got the millions of refugees pouring into Pakistan, everyone losing the small livelihoods that they had. Yeah, I mean, the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan is like one of the most brutal wars in modern history. It's like reports of the Soviets putting bombs and kids toys parachuted into Majardine territory. It's like whole waves of Afghans just walking into machine gun fire from the Soviets. And then there's plus all the like Western involvement that comes around a few decades later, of course. I mean, yeah, the Americans, most underrated show of all time, maybe. It gets into this war quite a lot. Just watch it. just watch it again. I love it.

I keep up a couple seasons in, but maybe I should, maybe should I give it another chance. Oh, I love it. It's so silly as well as being quite serious. Here's Friend of the Pod and just genius Venda fell Bob Brown we've had on a couple times in a 2013 paper for the National Bureau of Asian Research. Quote, those Soviet forces were able to control the major cities, they never succeeded in controlling the countryside where they cannot distinguish insurgents from the rural population. As a result, Moscow ultimately resorted to a scorched earth policy of systematic, dramatically destroying agriculture production and infrastructure in Afghanistan,

including orchards and irrigation systems, to drive the population out of the countryside and into the cities. Yet, since agriculture represented the predominant segment of the overall economy, the population was not able to cope economically in the cities, and instead switched to opium poppy cultivation in the countryside. And here's the thing about opium and why it's great for times like these. It's super easy to grow. It's reliable.

It doesn't need much water. And once harvested, it keeps for a lot of, lengthy period of time. Unlike most produce, you can grow. And since you can store it, you can use it as credit or money, and it is used as that in super poor areas. The Mujahideen, those fighting the Soviets, they did their share of fighting and destroying things as well, of course. Now, it wasn't all of them, but some of them also did their share, the lion's share really, of growing and smuggling opium. So you're growing all this poppy. You got a whole bunch of opium, but no one in Berlin or London is looking at a cop opium every day on the corners. What they're looking for is heroin.

And like we said above, that heroin market is dried up. Supply and demand and heroin, you can't, you can make a fortune off of it way more than you can with opium. You just got to refine it, run it through the labs. And our Fred Ayubafridi, that's something he is going to perfect. Getting ahead of myself here, because there's a whole lot more going on in Pakistan. I'm quote heavy in the beginning of this episode, but that's because there's so much good work on this.

Says Peter's quote, a multi-party multinational insurgent force known as the Mujahaddin, received military training, logistical support, and safe haven in neighboring Pakistan, as well as billions of dollars in covert funding from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. The resistance lasted nine years during which fighting destroyed much of the country's limited agricultural infrastructure and roadways, prompting growing numbers of pork farmers to plant poppy, a sturdy crop that requires little irrigation and does not rot. I don't know if I'm getting this wrong, but like India was non-aligned in the Cold War, right? and Pakistan was a big Western ally?

Is that the case? I think it was kind of fought over, right, between the two powers. I mean, it was allied with the U.S., even though the relations were tense. Like they burned down the embassy at one point and all that sort of stuff. But I believe it was, I honestly am not sure, but I know we worked with them very closely in the war in Afghanistan. I think, yeah, I think at this point they're pretty close allies on paper. Yeah, they played both sides, I think, a little bit too. I mean, the ISI is like one of the yikes.

Some certain commanders sought to establish financial independence by deepening their involvement in the heroin trade. For example, Nassim Akunzada, whose control zone

included the fertile Helmand Valley enforced opium production quotas for poppy farmers and truck drug shipments into neighboring Iran where he could fetch higher wholesale prices.

Gulbodin Hekmetar and Eunice, two fundamentalist commanders in eastern Afghanistan, operated heroin labs in the border areas and ran transport and bus companies

as a cover for moving narcotics and cash. Yeah. Heck Matti, I'm a bad guy. Yeah. Well, you know, and when the war first starts, there's actually isn't a ton of money coming in yet. There's no funding. And these guys are fighting the mighty Soviet army.

They need more resources. Sure, they've got some of those foreign funds coming in eventually, but they turn to opium growth to make that money. Some of the more powerful warlords and tribal leaders fighting the Soviets, turn to the opium production, to start funding their groups, and they even issue a fatwa eventually saying it's halal or okay.

God always finds a way. And in this case, it's making drugs. Yeah. The United States and Saudi Arabia start pouring money and weapons into the Mujahideen resistance, funneled through Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the ISI, and the great overland supply chain of the 1980s comes to life. You got guns and money going up the road into Afghanistan, and the trucks have to come back down, right? With what, you may ask?

A whole lot of opium. Same truck and company and protection up, same trucks and protection down. And one of the men, if not these, man controlling this is Ayuba Fridi, trucking imprisario. And the tribal areas become this industrial park. Opium comes over from Afghanistan and refineries. Actual heroin labs sprout in the tribal areas where, again, Pakistani law does not operate. A study we've got in a book chapter on the Pakistani trade counts between 100 and 200 heroin refineries in the Khyber agency alone by 1988. The DEA's 1994 intelligence report on Southwest Asian trafficking

describes Landi Kotal in this era, Afridi's hometown as an open opium market town, product on tables, wholesale, retail, come one, come all. And also, you've got hash pressed and tequila bricks stamped and gold, other bricks sealed and aluminum wrappers printed with a ketchup logo or a French dried fruit logo, actual condiment branding as camouflage. Even in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan,

where everyone is illiterate, branding is important. I mean, this is like a Don Draper anecdote. he tells a hippie who berates him for working and advertising, you know? That's really good. I mean, you want to congratulate in for the factory quote, but that's better. That's solid, too. I'm bad in a thousand right now, bud. A few more numbers.

The number of heroin addicts in Pakistan in 1980 at the start of this is effectively like zero. It's a rounding error. By the middle of 1982, $30,000. And by 1988, the estimates run from 1.2 to 1.7 million Pakistani heroin addicts, plus another three quarters of a million regular hashish uses. Opium dens in the mountains, cheap heroin in the alleys of Karachi and Lahore. Did I say it right that time?

Yeah. Yes, he did. Yeah. And you can bet the Pakistani political military elite, of which Afridi was incredibly adept at ingratiating himself with, were getting rich off it. Remember, he's the one who controlled the trucks and logistics in the area. They need him.

Says Peters, quote, If the Mujahideen's involvement in the poppy trade was caused for concern, More worrisome still were the Pakistan military's links to heroin trafficking. 70% of the world's supply of high-grade heroin was produced in or smuggled through Pakistan by 1984, according to European police estimates. There was widespread evidence that the covert pipeline run by the ISI, which brought weapons and material by truck and donkey to the Afghan guerrillas, funneled out vast amounts of heroin.

In 86, two Pakistani military commanders are arrested with over 200 kilos of pure heroin, then released. So you've got these widespread sort of heroin networks and widespread corruption and these labs being in like the tribal areas where there's little federal government oversight. The government of Pakistan basically, you know, they're pretty hesitant to act. And the Americans, they're not about to do anything either. Plus, you've got the Soviet war kicking off a massive wartime economy, which is more great news if you run a trucking company. So you've got refugee camps that need feeding. Feeding needs trucking. The resistance needs arming.

Arming needs trucking. And every convoy, every warehouse, every checkpoint waiver is a favor. in somebody's ledger. A man with trucks, warehouses, armed men, and the trust of the tribes on both sides of the Duran line, which is the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, is like a single man infrastructure. And the men who owns the road is happy to keep it open for everybody

because everything that moves on it is in either direction, in every sense, pays. So inside that goal rush, what does Ayuba Fridi build? He builds a machine. He moves the open from Afghanistan, moving through exactly the trucking, networks as family has run for a generation, into labs in the tribal belt that sit legally out of

reach. Landy Coel is the depot, and he is Lindy Kotel's leading man. This is where the partnership matters, right? A freeze in the tribal areas with the product and protection. And his older partner, Iqbal Beg, who we mentioned earlier, the mentor of types, is in the cities with the urban connections and the finance, and a couple of other names are involved as well. Anwar Katok, Tariq, but you'll be hearing a lot more of because the DEA is eventually going

to describe these four men in an official cable as comprised. in quote, the leadership of the single most prolific heroin in hashis drug trafficking operation in Pakistan. So these guys, they're the ones in the gold rush selling the spades, but they're also selling like spades, wheelbarrows, dungarees, and the questionable views on the Chinese, like all in one go, one stop shot, everything. And the drugs. Oh, yeah, and the drugs.

Yeah, the drugs are pretty big, big deal. Now, Afridi deals with the start of the operation, right? The product, protection, the tribal belt, the trucks. Beg is the downcountry business face. The cities, money, connections, the guy a foreign buyer can actually find. And they do. Anwar Katak is the deal side fixer. And Tarik Butt rides a harder line, which is why when the U.S. courts finally move on these guys,

but and Beg catch the heroin indictment, while the hash case names Beg, Katak, and Afridi. Beg as the city boy is actually kind of like a respectable one in terms of like how presents himself, right? He's the elder statesman. He's not a tribal chief din. he owns cinemas, textile factories, commercial property, a pizzeria. He is a pillar of Lahore. But is actually his brother-in-law, no relation to Seymour. In 1986, he takes over a battery factory because the factory's previous owner, who happened

to be smuggling heroin into Vienna for Bud at the time, dies when a drug-filled balloon burst in his stomach. And per a DEA agent quoted at the time, the battery factory then becomes, quote, a social club of misfits, dogs, murderers, and dope dealers. Mm, Pakistani pizza. Yeah. I feel like this was the major story of drug smuggling when I was growing up, the idea of the meal with the condom full of cocaine or heroin,

which bursts in their gut and kills them. You don't hear that much these days, do you? You also don't hear as much about unwanted pregnancies either. Someone's been doing their job well. I don't even know how to respond to that segue. But, no, you don't hear, I'm going to ignore the second part. But yeah, you don't hear that much about, I know it's still a thing like it happens in like airports and like Columbia sometimes

and stuff like that. I think the movie's probably scared a lot of people from doing it, which is probably a good thing. You know? There's better ways to smuggle drugs and swallowing condoms full of them and putting them in your stomach, you know? Although it was just a plot on euphoria. The last season of euphoria, that was part of the plot. And they did get sick.

Can you just go the other way? I mean, yeah, let's move on. Let's move on. Now, once the product leaves Pakistan, it goes global. numbers get stupid. A single Hashi shipment of 57 tons, 5-7 to the Netherlands, 30 tons of go towards California, loads hidden in consignments of frozen fish, loads and better for trucks, these guys are moving weight. And the operation has pretty much three lanes, right? The first is the Balkan route. We've talked about this, I think, a couple of times in a couple episodes.

Opiates move from Pakistan into Turkey for further refinement in morphine-based labs, then truck into Western Europe. The second route to move is by sea. Product moves overland to staging areas on Pakistan's desolate shore, then out to ships anchored offshore, destined for Western Europe, Turkey, and the U.S. And lastly, there's an air route, Karachi Couriers, a 1993 seizure at Karachi Airport, documented heroin hidden in TV picture tubes, pesticide spray tins, teleprinter paper rolls, and copper wire spools, even some mules, swallowing amounts, as Sean is fond of. And one particular customer relationship starting in 1983 is going to matter more than all

of the rest combined. It's an American, a small-town upstate kid turned Gatsby-type Long Island guy with more aliases than fingers, who flies to Pakistan in person, meets the organization face-to-face, and over five years takes delivery of shipments after shipment, tens of tons, 100 in all, into the U.S. The story, the fishing boats, the bait barrels, the small-town cop, the $51 million, I think actually $72 million now that I've done more research. That is part two. And that IP is, is my ticket out of the podcast slums. It's just the kind of loiter you get with this guy, folks. Like one sniff of a Showtime line producer,

and he's ripping and grabbing for the rip-cord. One interesting note is, Afridi doesn't seem to have any rivals or, like, cartel wars he fights. There's no one gunned down, no turf battles. So, like, not like Escobar or Chapa right there. You know, he doesn't have Sicarioes. He does have tribal justice and tribal soldiers and loyalty.

And I wagered there was and definitely are some who got dealt with, but it's not like you can't find any record of this guy fighting battles or fighting wars. There was a standoff that we'll talk about, but that's really it. You could call him the call him Pashtun Escobar. Whoa, wait, there's a better one. Pablo Hashgabar. Neither one. Actually, those are both pretty, pretty solid. I'm not going to lie to it.

But for now, let's go back to Pakistan because Pakistan does occasionally pretend to arrest him. In 1983, a 17-ton hash seizure in Balochistan. Balochistan? Balochistan. How do we say it, Sean? I think it depends where you are. But it gets tied to Afridi, and a court hands him a one-year sentence in absentia, which means he's not there.

He's not going to be there. Nothing happens. As far as anyone can tell, it cost him absolutely nothing. That same year, May of 1983, customs and Antwer, Belgium, take down six and a half tons of Pakistani hash, and that seizure gets attached to his file too. Then April 24th, or I guess before that, April 24th, 1985, Pakistani authorities seized 17.5 tons of hashis near the hub dam outside Karachi, linked to Afridis organization, which is a wall of product that would fill a convoy of trucks.

Again, nothing happens to him. But that seizure goes into a file in Karachi like a landmine with a very, very slow fuse. And when it finally goes off, it's the only thing in Pakistan that ever really gets to him. Because for the most part, sitting in the tribal areas with a literal army, there's not much anyone can really do to him. Because by the late 80s, Ayyber Fridi is not a fugitive in any meaningful sense. He is Escobar.

He is Chapo, except he doesn't even really need to hide. He's too powerful, and no one in Pakistan can do anything to him in the tribals. Yeah, I think the Pakistani government actually merged the Fata, the federally administered tribal areas in 2018, into the neighboring province or region or whatever they're called like Kaibok-Actunwa. because I think the Fatah was just getting left behind,

even more than it normally does in infrastructure and development. The Pakistani government, which is hardly like full of raging altruists. We're worried it was going to get hairy out there all over again. So it's always been like a proper hinterland, right? It's always been considered even by Pakistanis, like, don't go there kind of place. Yeah, it's got that reputation. I mean, anytime you call it like the tribal areas, the unadministering,

it's going to carry those connotations, you know? Yeah. So what is happening during this time in Pakistan, like politically? General Muhammad Zia Ulhak is the military dictator who has run Pakistan through this entire golden age of heroin. He seizes power in a 1977 coup, hangs the elected prime minister. He overthrows a man named Zulfika. I never knew the first name. Let's just say Ali Bhutto.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Islamizes the court and the army. In August 1988, Zia's plane just falls out of the sky with everyone aboard. nobody ever conclusively explains it and Pakistan holds elections. The winner is Benazir Bhutto, 35 years old, Harvard and Oxford educated,

the first woman ever elected to lead a modern Muslim majority nation and the daughter of the prime minister Zia hanged. The general dies, the daughter of the man he executed takes the country and one of the first hard things

her government does is issue arrest warrants for Ayub Afridi. Yeah, we actually got into the story of Zio Huckin, in 2020, we did an episode about bootlegging around the world, which came off the back of a trip of mine to Gujarat. I might tell a funny story throughout my extremely weird

and well-connected ex-in-laws in a bit, just like humble tobacco farmers from opium-producing regions of Pakistan who just happened to know members of the Pakistani military, including some of those on the run from the ICC, actually, yeah, thinking about it, and saying it, I probably don't want to say anymore because I definitely don't want any of them slipping into my DMs. But very interesting people. I mean, the Lord never stops with this guy, you know? Never stops. Just one thing after another. You can know him for six years. He'll just

throw some of this stuff out. I mean, you know a little bit, but then there's just more coming out. I'm freaking every other week. I'm a Pandora's box, Danny. You know this. Yeah, there was one crazy bit where I think Musharraf, is that the former military dictator? He was on the run from one of these international courts. No one knew he was. And then I opened Facebook and there's one of these in-laws with their arm

around him like, hey, here's me with like cousin Pervez. And I'm like, ah, okay, cool. All right. That's a war criminal. But anyway, yes, I am no longer in that family, which is good for everyone involved. So we're back in

in 1988, and it's real pressure on him, sort of. And then things get interesting. There's a few versions of what happens next. Version one says in 1989, with Budo's government threatening to move on him, 5,000 of Afriese armed tribes come down from the mountains, or go up, I guess, I don't know, and move into his compound, his estate,

into the guest houses, into the gardens, and they just kind of live there, ready to pop off until the pressure passes. 5,000 men all with their guns, like the world's most heavily armed camping trip. They probably got some like, you know, sick campfires going, just sitting around making kebabs with the boys for days, letting a few shots off in the air.

Just like just vibing, dude. It actually sounds like a good time. No chicks though, definitely. Like, no, no women. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of the message right there, right? The message is I'm untouchable, and you don't have the balls or the wherewithal to do anything about it because I've got my 5,000 tribesmen behind me

and they're not going to let this happen. version two comes from the later record in ICIJ investigation. And interestingly, U.S. court filings, a police column, this is what it says, a police column of about 50 Pakistani police officers, actually goes up to arrest him and gets turned around by his militia. This version, I think, does not have 5,000 tribesmen, but it does have enough to scare off the guards. I think in the movie version, we kind of combine the two. We definitely go with 5,000 tribesmen. And maybe we sent 50 police officers showing up and there's a couple shots fired and they just turn, turn tail and run away. So yeah, Budo can't do anything.

And then in 1990, her government falls, a new government comes in when the incoming administration promptly disappears the warrants, which honestly were meaningless in the first place. Afridi is also reported to have financed the 1990 prime minister campaign of her replacement, Nawaz Sharif. Also in October 1990, Ayibahirini pulls in Escobar. He runs for a seat in the National Assembly of Pakistan, which has 217 of them, and he wins. And he's not the only drug lord who wins a seat in the assembly. There's another smaller guy who wins as well. Rumors say he offered between $600 to $2,000 a vote, which seems like way too much money in rural Pakistan. It can't be accurate, right?

Maybe that's in Pakistani rupees, which I think back then would have been like $90, I think, which again, seems really high for buying votes in that part of the world where $90 is probably like a yearly salary. You know what I'm saying? This is like the 80s. It's like dollar a day, or I guess the 90s, you know, dollar a day sort of situation.

In Toronto, every arrival is a statement and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19 speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility

and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Catalyc. Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility, Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury.

Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back-to-school season. Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's sliced deli-meat products for always $375. And get life brand pure Vita shampoo or conditioner for $8 each. At Real Canadian Superstore, when you're ready, we're ready, with a whole world and more. When Westcham first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere,

and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years.

His partner, Iqbal Baeg, the mentor, he wins a seat in the Punjab Provincial Assembly the same season. And that, my friends, is when we get our cold open. January 2nd, 1991, two months after the election, the new government of Nawaz Sharif makes no move whatsoever to arrest the honorable member of parliaments, and a Western drug official offers the bleakest quality assurance stat in the story. In his ear in Pakistan, nearly every drug suspect he'd helped put in handcuffs had eventually walked. At September of 1994, the Washington Post publishes a story in which the former and just-uposed Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mr. Sharif, says that back in early 1991, when he'd just taken office,

two of the most powerful men of the country came to see him, the Army Chief and the head of the ISI, the notorious spy agency of Pakistan, and, says Sharif, they pitched him, fund the ISI's covert operations, the off-book wars, with large-scale heroin money. Sharif tells the post he was, quote, totally flabbergasted and says he shut it down. It should be noted he was out of office then, but he wins the prime minister's seat again in 1997. Both generals, of course, deny it. The State Department in the DA say that they have no evidence that happened. And Sharif, when he says this, is a deposed politician in kind of like a knife fight with the army.

So he wants to throw dirt on them. You know, it's the exactly kind of person who might invent the story like this, but also the kind of person who might finally be free to tell it. I mean, I think you really know that the Brits have done a number on a part of the world when, like, a leader of a country in South Asia is saying he's flabbergasted at something. That is when we've really done our job out there. 18 years later in 2012, Pakistan Supreme Court rules in a long-running case that the same two generals had in fact secretly funneled money to politicians to rig the 1990 election for the alliance Sharif wrote to power on, but it wasn't drug money, according to them. It was about bank money, so it kind of corroborates the man on the mission, but not the heroin. But, you know, there is a CIA commission study alleging the ISI did use heroin profits to fund its wars.

So it goes back and forth. I don't know enough about what to believe, but I can tell you in the movie version, we go with whatever is the most salacious. We might even make one of the generals gay. Like, who cares, dude? It's Hollywood and that's how you win. Yeah, that's good. I like you thinking. We need more like this.

Yeah, just make all of them gay. No, wait. We've seen a lot of movies. Based on a true story doesn't mean much these days. You know what I'm saying? You get a little fancy full with things. Meanwhile, quietly on the other side of the world, American law enforcement is getting to work.

In June of 1991, a federal grand jury in Brooklyn indicts Igbal Beg and Tarik Bhat on heroin charges. And later, in September, a second Brooklyn grand jury indicts Beg, Anwar Katak, and Ayur-Fridi for hashish importation and money laundering. roughly 50 tons of it into the U.S. between 1983 and 1988. In April 1999, a superseding indictment stitches all four men into one case. Now, who was it that was receiving the hash in the U.S.? Then bringing it into the country, distributing it all of that?

We're going to get to that next week or maybe the week afterwards because Sean's got a pretty good episode coming up too. That's a big case that happens in 1988, 1989, but this one of the Pakistani traffickers in the early 90s doesn't make a sound. because the indictment is sealed. For almost two years, one of the most connected men in Pakistan is under secret American indictment.

He's sitting in parliament. He's going to sessions, entertaining, and per one detail that surfaces later in a DEA cable, even traveling abroad on official business all while this indictment is out there. The DEA, for their part, they are not confused about who he is. The Islamabad office's own cable

when it all spills out later, opens its background section like the first page of a thriller, quote, a Fridi has been the most sought after Pakistani DEA fugitive since his indictment in 1991. He purportedly has several thousand armed gunmen at his disposal protecting him from authorities and allegedly pays off government officials to alert him of pending actions against him. Why? Sealed, by the way, because the case being built against him wasn't made of wiretaps. It's made of people, cooperators, witnesses, men with very good reasons to fear defendant

with several thousand gummen and a tip-off network inside his own government and a ton of power. And we're going to meet one of those men relatively soon. But then somebody in Washington gets tired of pretending of this not being out there and wants to force the hand of the government, the U.S. government, and hands a reporter a document. So in February of 1993, New York Newsday, and the fact that a Long Island tabloid keeps carrying this global story is not an accident, publishes a leak study commissioned by the CIA's Counter-Nicic Center. written the previous fall by a veteran intelligence officer, a career Pakistan hand, his peers called the best in the region. And the title of it is,

heroin in Pakistan, showing the wind. Like back then, this sort of article, even in the local New York tabloid, which was still a pretty big paper, I think top 10 in the U.S., it meant something.

We weren't overwhelmed with like sloppy conspiracies 24 hours a day. Is that, is the newspaper still going? I'd not actually heard of it. Yeah, New York Newsday. It's like the third in the New York Tabloid, right?

You had the post in the daily news and Newsday, but with, you know, major focus on Long Island. You know, back then, these papers all had foreign bureaus in, like, multiple countries. I think Newsday won, like, foreign reporting pollsters in the 90s or early 2000s. They used to have reporters stationed. That was how good in the newspaper industry was. They had reporters stationed all over the world. One of the, I think their foreign editor was one of my professors at CUNY for a semester.

Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Imagine you're just running a local beat doing council meetings. meetings and then some spook hands you this. I mean, wow, we. Well, he wasn't doing local beats. I mean, this guy was probably one of their foreign reporters who was doing this sort of stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. No, it wasn't like you think this guy's going to school council meetings in Nassau County and then some CIA agents like, hey, buddy, take a look at, no, no,

that's what I'm saying. I literally thought that was what was happening here. He was like doing stories about parking tickets and then some guy decided it was up to him. Put that in the, like he's covering high school baseball in, uh, in Hempstead. And then what? one of the kids' fathers is like a rogue CIA agent. That goes in the movie. That works. So good. Yes.

Perfect. Done. Anyway, per Newsday's account of the study, it just torches everything. Heroin has penetrated the country's highest political circles. The drug is becoming the life butt of the economy and the political system, with a black economy now roughly the size of the legitimate one. The ruling alliance and its predecessors routinely tap traffickers to bankroll campaigns. The ISIs used heroin profits to help fight.

finance the war in Afghanistan and to fund Sikh militants in India and insurgents in Kashmir. And it names names near the top. Three men from a Lahore family, in-laws and advisors or ridding Prime Minister Sharif, are described as trafficking figures. It even says under the late dictator Zia, unbeknownst to him, two of his pilots used presidential aircraft to smuggle heroin, one of them during a state visit to the U.S. Wow. And the study's centerpiece, the leading heroin baron of Pakistan, named in full. Malik Muhammad Ayub Khan Afridi, also known as Ayub Afridi, described as deeply interconnected with military intelligence, the presidency, and the ruling coalition, with direct access to the president

of Pakistan himself and crowned the king of Khyber heroin. And the king of Khyber heroin keeps right on showing up the parliament unbothered, unhidden, and extremely unarrested. The Pakistani embassy's response is pretty classic, right? Their press attaché calls it a stupid, faceless report and insist the president of Pakistan is one of the cleanest men in the entire third world. Tallest dwarf, yeah. Then in April of 1993, the U.S. formally files its extradition request with Pakistan, and with it, the sealed Brooklyn indictment finally goes public.

The king of Khyber heroin is now officially a wanted man in America. That same month, the Washington Post gets its own tour of the fortress, the compound, you know, the pool, the orchards, 80 relatives and residents, a village basically. and this time a family member actually does some talking, his older brother, Zamir, whose defense is a masterclass of tribal PR. Not a single person can say he bought hash or heroin from Inafridi. But one guy definitely can.

He's an American sitting in a federal prison at that moment and cooperating to get himself out of a massive drug trafficking conviction. Meanwhile, Pakistan is getting even messier. The assembly gets dissolved in the year's turmoil and when a friddy files to run again, his nomination papers are rejected and his immunity is officially gone. And then the hammer drops.

August 31, 1993. Pakistan is between elected governments being run by a caretaker prime minister who opens judicial extradition proceedings against 16 drug barons at once. The name list, of course, includes Afridi, described by the wire as, quote, former member of parliament,

alongside his boys, beg, butt, and Anwar Khan Kotik, among others. One defendant on the water list is being processed for extradition to Saudi Arabia, where the sentence for his offense is beheading, so, you know, could be worse. Ouchy. I mean, that would hurt, yeah. 993 is, I mean, it's also prime time for al-Qaeda in this region, right?

It's like the World Trade Center bombing in New York, in Lardin and Sudan, but loads of his boys are back kind of on Afridis turf as well. Is there any evidence he was wound up with that world? I wouldn't say it was prime time in 93, but in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. They got a few different eras, yeah. Yeah, yeah. In Pakistan or, you know, I never hear of him. There's nothing in the record of him being wrapped up with, with, with Al-Qaeda.

And when he's finally back in Pakistan and freed, which we'll get to in episode three, they like he fights again, they use him to go against the Taliban. So I don't, I don't know. I don't think that he was locked in with them. Great guy. Because, you know, the whole thing with the, even the Mujahideen, they look down on bin Laden and those guys during the war. Yeah, yeah.

They thought they were all bluster. They called them, what were they, the Afghan Arabs, right? They, they, like, thought they were all talking, didn't really do much, and we're just kind of like, they viewed bin Laden. It was like a rich kid, uh, pretender. I guess he showed them. Jesus. Sensing that for once, the government actually means it, some of the accused slip across the border into Afghanistan. One of those drug lords who slips out, some people say, is a Fridi, allegedly, according to some, because some other accounts say he just holds up on his comments.

compound and just doesn't leave. Whatever the case, the fugitive life doesn't appeal to him, because within about a year of this moment, the most sought after DEA fugitive in Pakistan is going to pick up a telephone and call the DEA himself to negotiate his surrender before eventually having an insane second act. But before that, the caretaker government ends, elections happen, normal politics resume, and the whole go after the drug lord's thing in Pakistan, it kind of just dies on the vine. But unfortunately for a free day, he doesn't have just the Pakistan he's going after him, he has the feds. And they do not give up or go quietly.

The crazy thing is, though, how he really gets onto the radar of the Americans in the first place. And that's from one of his customers, an American, a guy living on Long Island, barely 30 years old, with big dreams, who flies to Karachi in 83 with a fake name and real money, whose own downfall starts not with the CIA or the ISI or spy games, even the feds of the DEA, but with a phone call to a seven-man police department in a Rhode Island town of 3,000 people and a cop who runs the surveillance from his own backyard

deck while his wife grills hamburgers for a couple of DEA agents. So before where I said it was the movie Blow meets, you know, Wolf of Wall Street. It's actually kind of a little bit of super troopers too, which, you know, maybe not a comedy and not Vermont. It's Rhode Island, but you guys get it. Very small police force doing the

work here. The man's name, I'm not going to reveal it just yet, but brother, have I got a story for you guys coming? It is quite the story. Yeah, I can't wait for this next one. So for all those who want to support us, patreon.com slash our podcast for the bonus stuff. Underwapod.com for merch. And until next week, stay out of the tribal areas if you hold an official position.

This has been the underworld podcast. That was cool. And a lot of that is because I've seen IA 3D in the shared Google Drive for like, what, two years now? And I want to know. Four years. Yeah, I wanted to know what's inside that folder for a long time. And here we are. There's nothing in it for a long time.

I was like, this is too big. I'm too lazy. I'm off and do it. Then I got motivated. It's so cool, man. It's so cool. I'm not for a pizza now, which is also exciting. And it's not Pakistani.

It's near Poland. I think next week is going to be Sean's, which is like a documentary episode from Bolivia, which is going to be rad too, because I know you guys like when we bring that stuff in. But then the following week, I got a story for you guys. I don't think I've been excited about a story like this.

He hasn't mentioned it yet, but he's got a story. For the podcast. Because I haven't been in a while. Probably maybe the entire podcast. Who knows? It's going to be good. It's exciting.

It's going to be good. Get your expectations sky high. All right. Later, guys. Say it.