-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4306940,00.html
>>>I'm surprised the gov't doesn't use this to its advantage.
Addicts can function fairly normally as long as they have clean
outfits and a reliable source. What would be a better incentive for
working hard: An audit by the IRS or losing a connexion?
A<>E<>R <<<
}}}>Begin
The heroin factor
Victorious warlords set to open the opium floodgates
Paul Harris in Peshawar
Sunday November 25, 2001
The Observer
Sayed Ali welcomed the fall of the Taliban, but the new political and
social freedoms now on offer mean little to the poverty-stricken
Afghan farmer. What is important is that he can grow opium poppies
again - he has already planted his first crop.
In the small mud-brick village of Chinar Khalia, near the eastern
city of Jalalabad, Ali and other local farmers are now looking
forward to a bumper harvest around mid-April. The Taliban ban on
poppy-growing, which slashed Afghan opium production by 94 per cent
last year, is over. And the impact on the West will be huge - 90 per
cent of Europe's heroin comes from opium grown in Afghanistan.
'The Taliban order on poppy-growing was false,' Ali said. 'It hurt
many farmers that they could not grow poppies. Now I will earn money
again.'
But the wrinkled old farmer, whose leathery skin has been baked nut-brown after a
lifetime in the fields, is not the only one set to cash in. The new warlords, who have
replaced the Taliban across large swaths of Afghanis
tan, will earn millions of dollars too. The Northern Alliance has always indulged in
opium production, but now it has captured some of the richest opium-growing lands in
the country.
Of Afghanistan's 29 provinces, 10 grow poppies. Of these the richest are Helmand in
the south, still under Taliban control, and Nangrahar in the east, which has fallen to
local warlords. With massive potential riches from
opium at stake, the province is experiencing fierce factional fighting.
Ali expects the new rulers of the province to encourage him to grow as much opium as
possible. 'Before the ban the government used to collect taxes on my poppies, now the
warlords will collect them. We will have no proble
ms from them,' he said.
Opium-growing has a long history in Afghanistan, a tradition shattered by last year's
sudden Taliban ban on poppy planting after several years of unofficial tolerance and
profit from the crop. 'Last year was the first t
ime in 50 years that poppies had not been grown in my village,' Ali said.
During the ban the only source of poppy production was territory held by the Northern
Alliance. It tripled its production. In the high valleys of Badakhshan - an area
controlled by troops loyal to the former President Bur
hannudin Rabbani - the number of hectares planted last year jumped from 2,458 to
6,342. Alliance fields accounted for 83 per cent of total Afghan production of 185
tonnes of opium during the ban.
Now that the Alliance has captured such rich poppy-growing areas as Nangrahar,
production is set to rocket. Helmand, too, is being replanted by its Taliban rulers,
who have abandoned their anti-opium stance and want to
cash in on their remaining sources of revenue.
Western and Pakistani officials fear that, within a year or two, Afghanistan could
again reach its peak production figures of 60,000 hectares of poppies producing 2,800
tonnes of opium - more than half the world's output.
Alliance factions and other warlords deny benefiting from opium production, but it is
an open secret that nearly all tolerate it. Most are happy just to cream off the
taxes, but others have been more directly involved.
Hazrat Ali, one of the new warlords in control in Nangrahar, ran Jalalabad airport in
the mid-Nineties at a time when weekly flights to India and the Gulf carried huge
amounts of opium to Western markets. During the war a
gainst the Russians, the huge and illicit drugs trade nurtured by the mujahideen was
ignored and tolerated by the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies in return for
their commitment to fight the Soviet Union.
Now, with the Taliban ban on poppy- growing lifted, it would appear that Afghanistan
is facing a return to those days. The main Nangrahar opium bazaar of Ghani Khel has
reopened for business. Afghan opium traders arriving
in the Pakistani city of Peshawar claim 100 of the market's 300 stalls now sell opium
blocks stockpiled during the ban. The same is true of Kandahar, where the city's main
opium bazaar escaped the US bombing.
'All our evidence is consistent. They are replanting in a major way,' said Bernard
Frahi of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention located in
Islamabad.
For Afghan farmers it is a simple choice. A farmer can earn �6,000 for a hectare of
opium, compared to just �34 for wheat.
Ali knows opium produces heroin and disapproves of drug use, but he has a family of 14
to feed and his land has been gripped by three years of drought. 'I am poor and need
money for clothes and food. Perhaps if Afghanista
n becomes rich and there is peace, I will not need to grow poppies,' he said.
In the quiet Peshawar suburb of University Town, nestled between the offices of
Western aid agencies, a crowd gathers each morning outside a forbidding steel gate.
Inside, the roof of a sprawling mansion can be seen. The
beggars are here for alms. The man who lives here is Peshawar's most powerful drugs
baron and the poor know he can afford to be generous. Other large houses dotted around
Peshawar tell the same story. Locals refer to them
as 'the houses that drugs built'. Peshawar lies on the main smuggling route south. It
was also the home of the Afghan opposition during Soviet and Taliban rule.
In the lawless Pashtun tribal areas just outside the city limits, opium is sold
openly. It is easy, although illegal, to buy. In a shop on the main road to
Afghanistan, 26-year-old Imran cuts off a 50g piece of sticky, da
rk brown opium resin, known as tor . It costs just �7.
Foreigners are not allowed here, but it is just a short drive over
the tribal boundary past police guards who pay no attention to the
traffic. On the wall behind Imran hang a Kalashnikov machine gun and
a shotgun - a sign of the dangers of the drugs trade. But business
will soon be good, he says. The Northern Alliance warlords will see
to that. 'They would be stupid to try and ban the poppies. They make
so much money.'
It is estimated that when production picks up, about one million
Afghan farmers will earn �70 million from growing poppies. That is a
huge industry in a country with little other obvious sources of
foreign money exchange.
Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
End<{{{
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