Heroin, drug warlords reappear on Afghan scene
by Peter Dale Scott
-Guest Columnist-
[Quick on the heels of Taliban defeat, starving farmers are
replanting the opium poppies banned under the Islamist regime, giving
rise to fears of renewed drug warlordism. Engaged in the shoot-ing war,
Washington may be turning a blind eye to a favorite income source of its
allies, says Pacific News Service commentator Peter Dale Scott�bad news
for those who want to reduce global heroin production. Scott is a former
Canadian diplomat and professor emeritus at the University of
California, Berkeley, and has authored numerous books on drugs and U.S.
foreign policy.]
Within two years, Afghanistan may again be producing 2,800 or
more tons of opium annually, according to U.S. and Pakistani sources,
becoming again the world�s chief supply source. In areas bordering
Pakistan, where most of the opium is processed, prices have already
plummeted.
While the Taliban effectively forbade growing opium poppies�the raw
material for heroin�their defeat means starving farmers are hurrying to
replant the one lucrative crop available to them.
This is, of course, bad news for those striving to reduce the
scourge of heroin in the world. It also presents the risk of a return of
warlordism to Afghanistan�regional commanders and armies financed by the
opium in their area, jealously refusing to relinquish such a lucrative
income source to a central government. At risk is a revival of the
vicious internecine feuds that took so many civilian lives in the 1990s,
after the Soviet withdrawal.
With planting and other drug business already moving quickly on the
ground, there has not yet been any vigorous U.S. counteroffensive to
finance the post-Taliban government from healthier sources.
An October United Nations report confirmed that the Taliban
successfully eliminated opium production in Afghanistan with a ban in
2000 that was almost universally enforced. The feat was enormous: Before
the ban, Afghanistan supplied 90 percent of Europe�s heroin. Then,
Afghanistan provided 3,276 tons of opium poppies, more than half the
world�s output. This year�s post-ban crop, however, was a small 185
tons, over 90 percent of it from provinces under the control of
America�s allies, the Northern Alliance.
Those skeptical about Mullah Omar�s motives for the ban speculated
that the Taliban held substantial reserves of processed opium and wished
to drive up prices. The same sources predicted that a dumping of Taliban
opium into the world market would follow the U.S. attack. This did not
happen.
Indeed, the UN report noted that the dramatic reduction in Afghan
opium production was not offset by increases in other countries. The
stage was set for the biggest blow to global heroin trafficking since
the Communist crackdown in China after World War II.
However, what would have been the world�s largest curtailment of
opium production in half a century will now apparently be reversed. As
the Taliban was driven or fled from province after province, reports
indicated farmers were replanting wheat fields with opium poppies.
Another dark indicator of a coming boom is the recent and unexpected
release from a Pakistani jail of Ayub Afridi, once the Khyber Pass
kingpin for a network of Pashtun drug warlords in Nangarhar Province.
Some have interpreted his release as a boost to his former contacts such
as Haji Abdul Qadir, Haji Mohammed Zaman and Hazrat Ali, who, according
to the Asia Times Daily in Hong Kong, used to be the biggest
heroin and opium mafia in Afghanistan�s Pashtun belt.
Haji Abdul Qadir is now the political leader in Nangarhar Province,
west of Khyber Pass, while Hazrat Ali and Haji Mohammed Zaman are
leading the Afghan ground attack against the al Qaeda holdouts in the
nearby Tora Bora caves.
The lack of U.S. comment and nearly invisible reporting on these
developments are ominous signs that Washington may turn a blind eye as
its former prot�g�s and current allies finance themselves once again
with drug traffic.
Yet another sign is active disinformation by officials of the Bush
administration.
The Taliban�s drastic ongoing reduction in opium cultivation was
ignored, and indeed misrepresented, by CIA Director George Tenet in his
February report to Congress, in a speech that threatened retaliatory
strikes against the Taliban. �Production in Afghanistan has been
exploding, accounting for 72 percent of illicit global opium production
in 2000,� Tenet said. He added that �The Taliban regime in Afghanistan
... encourages and profits from the drug trade.�
This was two months after the first indications on the ground that
the Taliban interdict was being enforced.
In the l980s, U.S. officials ignored heroin trafficking in
Afghanistan by its allies, the mujahideen. As we move into 2002, it
appears that situation is being recreated.
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