VICE

This week on "Vice,"

the heroin epidemic that is crippling Iran.

And then, how global warming

is reigniting the Cold War.

The idea is the reestablishment

of Russia's control

over what Putin claims is its territory.

Don't point that camera, eh?

We're inside this giant ship now.

It's literally like we just entered the Death Star.

This is the area where all the junkies hang out.

It's hard to go much lower than this.

Since the American occupation of Afghanistan began in 2001,

the amount of opium cultivated in the country

has increased more than 2,500%,

making it by far the world's largest opium producer.

And while heroin use in the United States

has doubled in the same time span,

the biggest effect has been in neighboring Iran, which,

despite its fundamentalist Islamic regime

and the consequent strict punishments,

has one of the highest heroin addiction rates in the world.

And it's fighting a massive battle against the drug,

seizing nearly 400 tons of heroin a year

and losing thousands of lives in the process.

So we sent Suroosh Alvi to one of the most remote

and dangerous borders in the world to see

what the opium war looks like at its origin.

So we are rapidly approaching the Iranian border

with the Afghan Border Police,

and the situation out here is really bad.

It's impossible for them

to get all the heroin that's going through.

The commander said that there's about 1,000 kilograms every day

that they are not getting that's making its way into Iran.

Can you tell us why it's so challenging?

Is the weather like this often?

It's crazy out here.

This is one of the Afghani Border Patrol posts.

There's one post every 50 kilometers

and 4 soldiers in each one.

Imagine how difficult it is

to control all that empty space in this wide-open desert.

Can you tell us what it's like

fighting all the heroin smugglers?

Then they showed us what they have

to coordinate their defenses with.

This is insane.

Old-school walkie-talkies, CB radios,

and wires just jimmied together

with a car battery.

It's so rudimentary.

While well over 400 tons of heroin

is crossing this very border each year,

drug-trafficking has consumed the local economies

of impoverished border towns,

and many of the men being sucked into this trade

are not coming back.

But the heroin consumes more than

just the local economy,

as it has affected their entire way of life.

The local youth are not only addicts,

but some have also become the dealers,

like these 3 boys we spoke to

on the condition that we hide their identities.

Tell me about your jobs. What do you do, exactly?

This epidemic of heroin use

is actually a stark contrast to the amount of drugs here

prior to the U.S. occupation,

as shortly before America invaded the country,

the Taliban made opium cultivation strictly forbidden.

We spoke to Molla Mohammad Bashar Eshaqzai,

a former Taliban commander turned government official,

about how this policy has changed over time.

What was the Taliban's stance on drugs

before the U.S. occupation?

Under the current government in Afghanistan,

the number of addicts has more than quadrupled,

and it's estimated that with a total population

of just 30 million,

there are now well over one million addicts.

And they were quick to tell us why they think this happened.

The reason they feel this way is

because since the Taliban was removed from power,

not only do they no longer impose their ban on opium,

but they're suspected of actually running

parts of the smuggling operation.

In what ways is the Taliban involved with drugs currently?

Now, the Taliban is using the same drug money

to fund their ongoing fight against the coalition forces.

And with opium production increasing by 30 times

since 2001,

Afghanistan is now a narco-state

that is threatening to destabilize the entire region,

which is escalating tensions with their next-door neighbors,

the Islamic Republic of Iran.

With 80% of the heroin that ends up in Europe

now flowing through Iran, the nation's authorities,

who are notorious for blocking out Western media,

allowed us access inside the country

to document the devastating effects.

With a vast network of walls,

trenches, forts, and fences,

Iran spends approximately $1 billion a year

and devotes 12,000 men to fight an actual war on drugs.

More than 3,700 soldiers have lost their lives so far.

And of the approximately 2,000 executions

Iran has had in the last 3 years,

an estimated 70% of those were for drug-related charges.

But even though Iran now leads the world in heroin seizures,

this lethal drug is still flowing

across the border in record numbers.

So once the drugs leave Afghanistan, they come

through Iran, go to Turkey, and eventually to Europe.

But a lot of those drugs end up here,

getting consumed by the millions of addicts that are here.

In fact, there are now so many heroin addicts in Iran

that they can be seen using in plain sight, like at

a massive outdoor drug den we found in southeastern Tehran.

We were tipped off that this is the area

where all the junkies hang out.

It's kind of an outdoor shooting gallery/open bazaar.

Every morning, the dealers come

with a scale and a kilogram of heroin.

Now Iran is suffering the same fate as Afghanistan

because wherever heroin spreads, it infects the local population.

And as a result, this strict fundamentalist country

now has one of the largest numbers of heroin

and opium users in the world.

It's pretty heavy. It's hard to go much lower than this.

And while the sheer volume of addicts makes it

nearly impossible to arrest users,

it wasn't long before we found ourselves

caught up in a police raid.

Turn it off.

We wanted to find out what happened

to the street junkies who were swept up in raids like this,

so we went to the Rebirth Society, a homeless shelter

where the majority of the clientele seemed to be users

trying to stay off the streets.

Mohammed Abolfathi told us that the reason

so many junkies were hiding out here is

that while the government claims to offer rehab to addicts

caught up in raids, where they could actually end up

is in gruesome detention camps.

To see just how many Iranian addicts were now

suffering in these camps, we spoke to Hadi Ghaemi,

an Iranian-born human rights activist.

There are 657 camps,

not treatment centers in the traditional sense.

They are internment camps.

They are worse than prisons.

People are not getting treatment.

They are stacked up like sardines

in rooms without having proper access

to sanitation, food, or water,

and many of them are dying in these camps.

The number of camps seems to be increasing,

along with the number of addicts,

as the government now reports more than two million users,

leaving many to estimate

the actual number of heroin addicts is much higher.

Since the amount of drugs coming into the country shows no sign

of slowing down, we talked to the head of Iran's DEA

to get the government's point of view on the problem.

The idea that America is not only directly responsible,

but actually actively allowing this to occur,

was not just isolated to the anti-narcotics police.

Almost everyone we interviewed felt the same,

like Mohammad Mahdi Kariminiya, a Shiite clergyman.

And as this theory gains momentum,

so does anti-U.S. sentiment, which can be felt

throughout the country, like at a Friday prayer service

where senior Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami was speaking.

It became clear to us that whether their theory was true

or not, the tremendous spike in heroin flowing to Iran

is being used as a powerful propaganda tool against the U.S.

To get some perspective on how this happened, we sat down

with Sarah Chayes, who spent 10 years in Afghanistan

and served as a special advisor to Admiral Mike Mullen,

who reported directly to the Secretary of Defense

and the President of the United States.

Everyone in Iran is blaming America

for the explosion of heroin

that's coming into their country.

What is your view on that?

I wish American officials were that smart.

Quite frankly, in my experience over a decade,

Iran never even came into the conversation.

When the United States is at war

with a country or an entity,

consciousness just stops at the border.

It became terrorism and nothing else.

We were paying almost anyone

who could present himself

as an anti-terrorist type of guy.

And that could have been a war lord

or it could have been, you know,

an extremely corrupt government official.

A number of our political interlocutors, not least