How drugs reach Karachi from Helmand does not need a rocket science explanation. Palms are greased along the route and, therefore, it is of little wonder that drug prices at the destination are exorbitant.
Khurram Hussain Sahib, in an article titled ‘Hidden economy’, published in an English daily recently, raised important questions pointing to something sinister that goes on unnoticed. He says: “The State Bank operates 16 clearing houses in cities all over the country. Every month it releases data on how many cheques were presented for clearing in each of these, and what the total amount cleared by the cheques was. If you take this data, which stretches back to 1999, and plot it for each city in Pakistan, you notice something very interesting. Remove the cities of Karachi and Lahore from the sample for the time being because these are global cities in a sense with long distance connections. Compare only the regional cities and here is what you will find.
Baluch Sarmachar 