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Taliban Threatens 'Grow Poppy or Die!' Okke Orstein Okke Ornstein is an internationally acclaimed journalist working on assignment for NewsMax.com in Afghanistan. He reports from Kabul.
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Policemen in Afghanistan are not happy with their lives. The highest-ranking officer makes about $80 per month, and "the Taliban pay better," one policeman tells me.
Would he go fight with them? "They haven't asked me. But I have to survive. If they asked me I would," he replies.
I offer him a cigarette. He declines, and instead offers me a joint, a cigarette he rolled with Afghan hashish. Now it's my turn to decline. Then he produces a chunk of opium from his pocket, hoping I might be interested.
"Hey, I have to support my family," he answers my puzzled look. Drugs are everywhere in Afghanistan. This year's poppy harvest reached record levels with an estimated 6,000 tons of opium, the raw material for heroin. Afghanistan is the world's biggest heroin supplier, and drug trafficking accounts for about one third of the country's GNP.
The drug trade has corrupted virtually every level of society, notably law enforcement and the judicial system. The U.S. sees the growing Afghan drug trade as a threat to its national security. It creates an environment of lawlessness in which terrorist groups flourish, Doug Wankel, chief of the counter-narcotics task force at the U.S. embassy in Kabul explained to NewsMax.
Story Continues Below The Taliban distributes leaflets among farmers in the southern provinces that read: "Grow poppy or die."
Afghanistan shows how war stimulates the drug trade and the drug trade in its turn fuels war. After the Soviet Union invaded in 1979, livestock and cereal production decreased dramatically and desperate farmers turned to growing poppy to survive. Russian soldiers were trafficking drugs.
The Mujahideen – warlords fighting jihad against the Soviets while enjoying support from the U.S. and Pakistan – were also trafficking drugs to finance their struggle.
"Everybody, U.S. agents, Russian military, they all just looked the other way or were even assisting the drug trade," a Dutch drug trafficker who made several business trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan during that era remembers.
Eventually the Soviets were driven out and a Mujahideen government took power, followed by the Taliban regime. Drug production decreased briefly only when Taliban leader Mullah Omar outlawed it, with penalties including amputation and death.
Since the Taliban were chased out in 2001 by a U.S.-led coalition, poppy cultivation and drug production have again skyrocketed. One important reason is that following the ousting of the Taliban, the Mujahideen warlords (and druglords) were recycled into Afghanistan's new democracy.
"For political reasons, certain people have been accommodated who are now causing headaches," says Gulalai Momand, deputy country manager of the Senlis Council, a European think tank on drug policy working in Kabul on invitation from the Afghan government.
"They corrupt the judiciary, law enforcement. The whole system is collapsing. And it's all caused by the drug trafficking."
Authorities built a high-security prison for big traffickers, "but the big traffickers are not being arrested, so all they have inside is truck drivers and other small smugglers," adds Guillaume Fournier, the Afghanistan country manager of the Senlis Council.
Corruption in the judicial system is so widespread that authorities refrain from arresting important druglords, according to a report by the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies, which quotes General Mohammad Daud, deputy minister for counter-narcotics on the matter.
On the top floor of a Soviet-built apartment building lives General Aminullah Anarkhil. He used to be in charge of security and customs at Kabul International Airport, but was fired under pressure from Attorney General Abdul Jabbar Sabit for alleged corruption.
Aminullah shows photographs of his work – creating a secure airport from little more than an airstrip with some wooden shacks and damaged buildings. Undaunted by a lack of resources, he started to intercept and arrest drug couriers. But something strange happened. The smugglers were mysteriously released after being taken into custody.
After one successful month of arrests, people from the attorney general's office showed up to investigate unspecified corruption charges. Then he was fired.
Aminullah is convinced he was fired because he was interfering with the drug trafficking business. "I received many death threats, telling me that I should stop, I would be killed, and so on," he says.
We sit on pillows on the floor of his living room, surrounded by pictures of arrested drug mules and their contraband, hidden in body packs, capsules and other hiding spots. His son serves tea. Aminullah fears for the safety of his family – the government took away his bodyguards when he was fired.
"It is a very powerful and dangerous mafia," he says. "They are very well connected in the government."
He doesn't want to accuse the attorney general directly of being part of this mafia, but he explains that Sabit was the legal counsel of Hezb-e-Islami, a fundamentalist Muslim party that several countries have listed as a terrorist organization and counts Mujahideen warlords among its supporters.
Since Aminullah was fired, no drug couriers have been arrested at Kabul airport.
Is Afghanistan a narco-state? Not yet, most experts agree. Doug Wankel of the U.S. counter-narcotics task force explains that in a narco-state most government decisions are dictated by drug trafficking interests, and this is not the case in Afghanistan.
Comparing Afghanistan with contemporary Colombia, with its decades of drug-fueled internal war, Wankel points out the differences: Afghanistan's drug traffickers are much less sophisticated and control only domestic organizations, whereas the Colombians run highly sophisticated international networks, spreading their activities over various countries.
"Afghanistan today is like Colombia in the eighties," agrees Guillaume Fournier of the Senlis Council.
Opinions on how to prevent Afghanistan from developing into a Colombia differ immensely. The U.S. policy is centered around law enforcement and eradication, while trying to convince farmers to grow other crops.
But so far this policy has been a failure, when judged by the record harvest of opium this year. American officials even admit they will be happy if opium production will just be stable next year instead of growing even further.
"The U.S. tells the farmers to stop growing, but the conversation stops right there," says Fournier. "Eradication has not worked anywhere in the world, with the possible exception of Thailand where they had a very good alternative livelihoods program.
"In Afghanistan, they started with eradication even before they could offer any alternatives. It fuels the anger and determination of the insurgency and alienates the farmers. The U.S. is applying a lot of pressure to start with aerial spraying of poppy next year, but this will be a disaster, like putting more oil on the fire."
The Senlis Council was invited by the Afghan government to study the possibility of licensed poppy farming for medicinal purposes. Morphine is made from opium, and the Senlis Council claims there is a shortage of morphine in the world, which offers opportunities for Afghanistan.
"The U.S. freaked out when they heard about it," Gulalai Momand recalls. "The Afghan government subsequently toned down its enthusiasm. Their position now is that it is a good idea, but with insurgency still a problem in the growing regions it's not viable as it would be impossible to control."
Guillaume Fournier adds: "This is not really a new proposal. In the seventies, Turkey was a major poppy-growing country and heroin producer. Eventually they switched to pharmaceutical production of opium, and Turkey is now the most important supplier to pharmaceutical firms.
"Nixon rewarded Turkey with a preferential trade agreement. What we propose is not some brand new weird idea from outer space."
Editor's note:
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