Once the fuse was lit the gasoline-doused pyre of heroin and cannabis quickly caught fire, sending pungent billows of black smoke into the air.
The public destruction of millions of rupees worth of Afghan-produced narcotics at an army firing range in Peshawar, Pakistan, yesterday was an impressive sight.
But officials readily admitted that the 12,227 kgs of hashish and 383 kgs of heroin accounted for a tiny fraction of the drugs pouring in from neighbouring Afghanistan, the world's largest opium producer.
The trafficking of Afghan narcotics across its neighbour's highly porous border took off in the 1980s and has largely resulted in Pakistan having one of the highest rates of heroin addiction in the world.
Foreign agencies say it is still too early to assess the impact of the ongoing US air strikes in Afghanistan on the heroin market in Pakistan. But there are concerns that Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, as well as the opposition Northern Alliance, may start selling their opium stockpiles to help fund their war efforts.
There have been unconfirmed reports that Afghan drug dealers, anticipating disruptions to processing and distribution channels, have already "liquidated" their stocks, creating a surplus of cheap drugs in Pakistan and elsewhere.
A deluge of cheap heroin to Pakistan would undo progress made by the Pakistani authorities in recent years in curtailing imported drug supplies.
Officials in Pakistan say there is no proof to date that Afghan opium has begun to flood the market and drugs workers report that heroin prices are fluctuating wildly daily.
In Afghanistan, the market price has certainly dropped dramatically since the September attacks on New York and Washington. Before the attacks a kilogram of opium was selling in the markets of Afghanistan for up to $700, the highest level for almost a decade. It currently fetches between $150 and $330 per kg, according to the region's United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP). Last year, before the Taliban imposed a ban on the cultivation of poppies which produce opium, the market price was $30 per kilo.
Opium is converted into morphine and then heroin in Afghanistan and neighbouring countries.
The United Nations says it has already received anecdotal evidence that, as the autumn sowing season closes, farmers in eastern Afghanistan have started defying a ban on poppy cultivation imposed by the Taliban last year.
The UNDCP based in the Pakistan capital, Islamabad, says it has received reports that farmers have begun planting afresh in the Taliban-controlled Nangahar province whose capital is Jalalabad.
This is despite recent assurances from the Taliban that its prohibition on poppy cultivation remains in place. That ban was introduced last year by the Taliban in co-operation with the UNDCP.
In Pakistan, police and drugs workers are concerned that poppy cultivation could be reactivated in tribal areas in the west of the country neighbouring Afghanistan.
Speaking at yesterday's drug destruction ceremony, Gen Zafar Abbas said that with a resumption in poppy growing "the quantity of drugs passing through Pakistan also increases and it makes the job tougher for the law enforcement agencies".
The Pakistani authorities had reduced the amount of land used to cultivate poppies from 9,400 hectares in 1992 to about 240 hectares this year.
"There doesn't seem to be as yet any evidence that the situation here in Pakistan has changed but one concern that we have, and we have already mentioned this to the government, is to keep a tight eye on the cultivation of poppies in this country," said Mr Thomas Zeindl-Cronin from the UNDCP in Islamabad.
Mr Abid Ali Abid, who works for a regional development organisation near the Afghan border in Pakistan where poppy production has been eradicated, says it's "just a matter of time" before farmers begin to plant poppies again as it is such a lucrative business.
The scourge of Afghan heroin has been most severely felt in Pakistan since the 1980s. In 1979, the Iranian revolution led to the disruption of the traditional transport route for opium through Iran to Turkey and the West. Opium dealers began turning to their eastern neighbours instead.
According to national drug abuse surveys, the number of abusers of heroin increased from about 20,000 in 1980 to more than 1.5 million in 1994.
The UNDCP estimates that there are currently half a million chronic heroin users in Pakistan. This is one-seventh of the world's heroin addicted population
"If there are drugs around people will use them and now Pakistan is a fairly substantial market in its own right," says Rev Greg Rice, a Mill Hill missionary who runs a Caritas drug abuse treatment programme in Peshawar.
"We have a huge number of heroin users, very few reliable treatment facilities and quite a tiny proportion of heroin users who are interested in stopping their use of drugs."
As an acknowledgement that such a ready supply can never be stemmed, demand reduction has become a priority for the Pakistan government in its anti-drugs master plan drawn up a few years ago .
While the country's majority Muslim population shuns alcohol, cannabis is ubiquitous. Many heroin users progress from smoking cannabis to smoking heroin, which initially enhances the user's sexual performance.
Father Rice's residential detoxification and rehabilitation programme provides heroin users with a secure, retreat-like environment to overcome their addictions.
Asad Jan, an 18-year-old tobacco factory worker from Peshawar who has been on the programme for about a fortnight, says street prices for heroin increased since the September 11th attacks. He used to pay 200 rupees (£3) a gram deal per day to support his habit and this rose to about 280 rupees a gram.
Sitting on a bed in the sparse dormitory he currently shares with nine other men, he says he is hopeful that he will remain clean after he leaves the programme. "Allah has given me a chance to stop this habit and I hope I will not start again," he said.