Asia Times: Opium denial: Taliban continue to profit


	September 28, 2001	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Opium denial: Taliban continue to profit
By Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI - If US President George W Bush is serious about choking off funds to the Taliban he will have to look more closely at poppy cultivation, heroin processing and cash transactions in the "Golden Crescent", say Indian observers.

"It is inconceivable that Bush could have missed the most obvious answer to how the Taliban have been able to bankroll its activities," over the past decade, says Rajiv Sharma, a leading expert on post-Soviet era Afghanistan. Sharma, who authored the well-received book Pak Proxy War thinks that Washington has sought to play down the role of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, possibly because of the Taliban's links with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The ISI was tasked with the job of handling weapons supply and training for Mujahideen (Islamic freedom fighters) who fought off the Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the eighties with covert aid from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Initially, the ISI promoted opium cultivation to turn Soviet troops into heroin addicts, but the Soviets withdrew in 1998, leaving key Pakistani army officers hooked on the millions of dollars generated by trafficking, according to B Raman of the South Asia Analysis Group based in Chennai.

An unintended consequence of poppy cultivation and heroin extraction with ISI support has been the emergence of Pakistan and adjoining Iran as countries listed by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) as having the highest heroin addiction rates in the world. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran together constitute the so-called Golden Crescent, which rivals the South-east Asia's Golden Triangle for the production of heroin and other narcotic opium derivatives from the poppy plant.

The Vienna-based, INCB, a United Nations (UN) body, notes in its report for 2000 that large-scale, illicit cultivation of poppy in Afghanistan decreased in the crop year 1999-2000 only because of unfavorable weather conditions. "The total opium harvest in 2000 is estimated to amount to 3,300 tons, which is 28 percent less than the estimated amount harvested in the crop year 1998-1999," the report said. But even the reduced levels represent 75 percent of the world's illicit opium. According to the report, continuing production of opium in Afghanistan and related criminal activities in West Asia as a whole have the potential to "undermine the economic and social stability and jeopardize peace and security in the region".

"There is growing evidence of links between firearms smuggling, insurrection and drug trafficking in the Central Asian states," said C Chakraborty, member of the INCB, at the release of the report in February. Ninety percent of heroin produced in Afghanistan and Pakistan now finds its way overland through Iran and Turkey into lucrative markets in Western Europe, said R Sundaralingam, narcotics consultant to Interpol at Lyons, France.

In July 2000, under international pressure, the Taliban issued a decree banning poppy culitvation in all areas of Afghnistan under its control, but the INCB reckons that there can have been little effect because of vast stocks from previous harvests. "The reality on the ground doesn't match Taliban claims," says Ramesh Bhattacharji, narcotics commissioner with India's Central Bureau of Narcotics, which works closely the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Testifying to the US Department of State barely nine months ago, Michael Sheehan, Coordinator for Counter-terrorism emphasized that poppy is cultivated in Afghanistan "at the expense of wheat and other food crops desperately needed by the people, and is planted with productive soils, irrigation and fertilizers". "Narcotics-linked income strengthens the Taliban's capacity to provide support for international terrorism," Sheehan testified. "The Taliban admit to imposing the same ushr, a 10 percent tax, on poppy as they impose on other agricultural crops."

The Paris-based Observatoire Geopolitique des Drouges (OGD) or Geopolitical Drug Watch estimates that taxes on opium harvests and on heroin manufacturing labs together earns the Taliban over US$75 million a year. Significantly, the independent OGD describes Pakistan as a "narco-state" - a nation in which drug barons collaborate closely with politicians, senior bureaucrats and armed forces officers.

According to the INCB's Chakraborty, the illicit drug trade is difficult to tackle partly because of the illegal, hard-to-track "havala" channels for money-laundering developed by the traffickers. "It is easier to crack down on the source - illegal opium cultivation," he said.

Money generated from the narcotics trade, integrated into the international monetary system, plays an important role in the corporate sector, and is used to influence politics and the economy, according to a study by the New Delhi-based, government-run think-tank, the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA). "This money can buy politicians, fund elections, topple elected governments and take over business enterprises, or destablise an established politico-economic system," the IDSA study said.

(Inter Press Service)