The Taliban: Just Say No to Drugs

Monday, Oct. 1, 2001
As part of its crackdown on terrorism, the United States has opened a campaign against the terrorists' financial assets. Accounts traced to Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network are to be found and frozen. One of the terrorists's most important financial assets, however, might be harder to tackle: the money that comes from drug trafficking.

The cash generated by drug sales, even if unlaundered in offshore havens, can still fund terrorist operations. Afghanistan's poppy fields have long supplied the world with heroin, but never on the present scale. "The national crisis caused by three decades of permanent war has made drug production an important — and often the only available — source of income for Afghan peasants," says Major General Alexander Lyakhovski, a top Russian military expert on Afghanistan. Under the Taliban, Lyakhovski says, Afghanistan has emerged as the world's main supplier of opium and heroin. According to Russian law enforcement officials, Afghanistan currently grows opium poppies on 90,000 hectares, yielding some 5,000 tons of raw opium a year. Heroin is processed from this raw material in over 400 labs spread all over the country.

Last week, the Moscow-based daily Izvestiya quoted Colonel Sergei Volgin of the Russian Drug Enforcement Agency as saying that in 1999 the Taliban cleared $200 million from opium traffic. To appease world public opinion and prove that the Taliban are good Muslims, Taliban leader Mullah Omar signed a decree in July 2000 banning the cultivation of opium poppies. But the decree was just a smokescreen, according to Lyakhovski. "In reality," he says, "The Taliban encourage opium production. They clamped a 10% tax on all drug production in the country and use the proceeds to arm their troops."

The Russians claim the Taliban now control up to 45% of the world's black market in heroin. Their opponents, the Northern Alliance, do not seem to be doing as well: according to Lyakhovski, the anti-Taliban group accounts for just 6% to 7% of national opium production. Colonel Sergei Volgin told Izvestiya that 90% of the opium and heroin on the Russian black market comes from Afghanistan. His figures for Western Europe and the U.S. are 70% and 20% to 30%, respectively. To deprive the terrorists of this source of income will involve a lot more than just freezing bank accounts.