--- Begin Message ---
Heroin, Drug Warlords Reappear on Afghan Scene
Peter Dale Scott, Pacific News Service
December 20, 2001
EDITOR'S NOTE: 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 shooting 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.
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 per cent 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 U.N. 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 proteges 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.
Peter Dale 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.
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose
both, and deserve neither."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
-- Thomas Jefferson
_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
<FONT COLOR="#000099">Send FREE Holiday eCards from Yahoo! Greetings.
</FONT><A HREF="http://us.click.yahoo.com/IgTaHA/ZQdDAA/ySSFAA/xYTolB/TM";><B>Click
Here!</B></A>
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
Please let us stay on topic and be civil.
To unsubscribe please go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cia-drugs
-Home Page- www.cia-drugs.org
OM
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
--- End Message ---
