POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA: Taliban Funds Itself On Opium Farming – Experts

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Sep 26 2001 (IPS) - If U.S. President George W Bush is serious about choking off funds to the Taliban he would have to look closer at poppy cultivation, heroin processing and cash transactions in the ‘Golden Crescent,’ say observers here.

“It is inconceivable that Bush could have missed the most obvious answer to how the Taliban has 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 U.S. 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, says B. Raman of the South Asia Analysis Group based in southern Chennai city.

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 U.N. 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 unfavourable 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. Even the reduced levels represent 75 percent of the world’s illicit opium.

According to the INCB report, continuing production of opium in Afghanistan and related criminal activities in West Asia as a whole had the potential to “undermine the economic and social stability and jeopardise 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 here in February.

Ninety percent of heroin produced in the Golden Crescent countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan now finds its way overland through Iran and Turkey into lucrative markets in Western Europe, says 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 could 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 U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Testifying to the U.S. Department of State barely nine months ago, Michael Sheehan, Coordinator for Counter-terrorism emphasised that poppy was 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 fertilisers”.

“Narcotics-linked income strengthens the Taliban’s capacity to provide support for international terrorism. The Taliban admit to imposing the same ‘ushr’ a ten percent tax on poppy as they impose on other agricultural crops,” Sheehan testified.

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 not less than 75 million dollars a year.

Significantly, the independent OGD describes Pakistan as a ‘narco-state’ or 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 which are difficult to track. “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.