Pubdate: Sun, 07 Oct 2001
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: John Daniszewski, Times Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

TALIBAN'S DRUG WAR RISKS UNRAVELING

Asia: The Afghan Regime's Opium Ban May Fall On Deaf Ears As Its Forces 
Struggle To Stay In Power.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Despite its preaching of Islamic values, 
Afghanistan's ruling Taliban has a tawdry secret: Until recently, it was 
the world's largest producer of opium, using taxes on drugs to finance its 
military as it helped spread addiction to its neighbors in Asia and to Europe.

Only in July 2000 did Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar finally condemn 
the cultivation of opium taking place openly outside his stronghold of 
Kandahar, and in one edict he brought an output of 3,200 tons a year to a 
virtual standstill.

But with war and uncertainty looming, and the possibility that the 
extremist Islamic regime's grip on power will be loosened by a U.S. 
military assault, international anti-narcotics officials fear that the 
recent victory in the war against drugs may be short-lived--undone by the 
new war against terrorism. They say they see signs already of Afghan 
traders and smugglers dumping stores of drugs onto the world market rather 
than risking their loss in a U.S. assault. Since the Sept. 11 attacks in 
New York and near Washington, they say, heroin prices have plummeted here 
in neighboring Pakistan.

They also suspect that Afghan farmers will return to their old habits of 
poppy cultivation within the next few weeks--it is nearly planting 
time--because they know that the Taliban government is in trouble.

These officials paint two scenarios, with the same result: Either the 
Taliban will be overthrown after a U.S. assault, rendering Omar's decree 
moot, or the Taliban movement will have no choice but to relax the ban at a 
time when its forces are fighting for their survival.

Drugs thrive in a war culture, because warlords need the money from such 
illicit sales to buy weapons, and growers and smugglers need an environment 
of lawlessness to operate without fear of the police.

That's why drug production had burgeoned in Afghanistan since the Soviet 
Union invaded the country in 1979. The Soviets were ousted 10 years later, 
but fighting among moujahedeen factions, and then between the Taliban and 
its foes, has meant a two-decade drug bonanza.

When opium cultivation peaked in 1999, Afghanistan produced 4,600 tons, or 
three-quarters of the world's supply. In 2000, the last growing season 
before Omar's ban, it dropped to about 3,200 tons, mainly because of drought.

Bernard Frahi, the U.N. drug control program representative for Afghanistan 
and Pakistan, estimates that at least 3,000 fewer tons of opium were 
produced in the world this year as a result of the strict Taliban program 
against poppy cultivation.

As a result of Omar's ban, most of the opium produced in Afghanistan this 
year has been in the meager areas controlled by the opposition Northern 
Alliance. According to a U.N. report Friday, 150 tons of opium were grown 
on the alliance's territory, versus 50 tons in the much larger territory 
controlled by the Taliban.

But the Taliban ban hasn't slowed the flow of drugs out of Afghanistan, 
according to Pakistan's Anti-Narcotics Force. The army officer in charge of 
the force, Maj. Gen. Zafar Abbas, says his 6,000 troops are interdicting 
just as much contraband as ever, bolstering his belief that drug producers 
and traders already had plenty of drugs stored and in the pipeline.

In fact, British Prime Minister Tony Blair last week accused the Taliban of 
being the world's biggest hoarder of drugs and seemed to suggest that the 
United States and its allies might make the stores of drugs a prime target 
for military action if they find them.

"The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young 
British people buying their drugs on British streets," Blair said. "That is 
another part of their regime that we should seek to destroy."

Blair Links Drugs to Taliban, Al Qaeda

Blair, presenting his government's outline of the role of Osama bin Laden's 
Al Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban government in the Sept. 11 
attacks in the United States, underscored the role of drug money in aiding 
and financing both organizations. He said that both Al Qaeda and the 
Taliban exploit the drug trade, and singled out the Taliban for protecting 
the storehouses of drug suppliers.

In a book published last year, "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and 
Fundamentalism in Central Asia," author Ahmed Rashid pointed out that opium 
taxes fueled the Taliban's war against the Northern Alliance, enabling the 
regime to win control of about 95% of the country.

Drug money "funded the weapons, ammunition and fuel for the war," Rashid 
wrote. "It provided food and clothes for the soldiers and paid the 
salaries, transport and perks that the Taliban leadership allowed its 
fighters."

Beginning in 1996, U.N. officials quietly opened discussions with the 
Taliban about staunching the flow of drugs, offering in exchange financial 
aid to farmers who convert to growing other crops. In the course of these 
discussions, Omar agreed to let U.N. officials conduct surveys of opium 
fields in the country.

In his Islamabad office, which looks out onto the green mountains leading 
to Afghanistan, Frahi has a framed photograph showing him crouched in front 
of a beautiful field of red-and-white poppy flowers. Next to him is an 
Afghan fighter wielding a weapon.

The photo was taken before Omar's ban; today, Frahi says, those poppy 
fields have been planted with wheat--a fact verified by the extensive 
international inspections--and the Taliban deserves credit for it.

He and other anti-narcotics officials are proud of their three-year effort 
to persuade Omar to agree to the ban on opium production. But Frahi says 
he's not convinced that the ban will survive another growing season, which 
begins with planting in the next few weeks.

"The ingredients for illegal cultivation are there," he warned. "You have a 
war situation, a complete absence of government, a breakdown in order, a 
lack of enough compensation, and starvation coupled with poverty. Then if 
you add the need for the Taliban to get help from some [opium-growing] 
tribes. . . . "

No matter what happens, he says, it is likely that the Taliban will be too 
preoccupied with staying in power to devote many resources to enforcing the 
ban on drug farming that Omar imposed, with difficulty, last year.

The poppy-planting season begins in mid-October and continues through 
November in Pakistan, so this is the critical time for farmers. The 
international community will not have a good idea what they decided to grow 
until at least February, when the crops begin to flourish.

"Today we have all reasons to be pessimistic," Frahi said.

Abbas, Pakistan's anti-drug czar, says he is already hearing rumors that 
Omar has lifted the poppy-growing ban, although he could not confirm the 
reports.

Frahi says it is remarkable that Omar's ban was a success, considering that 
opium brings in three times as much money as food crops such as wheat, and 
that Afghan farmers are desperate for income.

Abbas, who oversees a mixed force of police and soldiers eradicating the 
poppy crop in Pakistan, says he doesn't believe that Afghanistan's success 
is sustainable because it didn't do enough to improve life for the growers.

He believes that the best method for getting farmers to stop growing 
poppies is a "balanced approach" in which the government invests in roads, 
water systems, education and other infrastructure. That would reduce 
desperation and create jobs in rural areas, he says, so that poppy-growing 
ceases to be seen as the only route to prosperity.

"When you have all these things, you can demand [they] stop growing. And if 
they grow anyway, we carry out forcible eradication," he said.

Ravages of Addiction Part of War's Cost

In Pakistan, such social programs coupled with enforcement and eradication 
have had a more durable effect, he asserts, pointing out that Pakistan's 
opium production fell from about 800 tons a year in the mid-1980s to a 
fraction of a ton last year.

The human toll of the Afghan drug trade can be witnessed in two neighboring 
Islamic countries, Iran and Pakistan, where the number of addicts in just a 
few years has skyrocketed from near zero to 1.2 million and 4 million, 
respectively.

When people think of the cost of 22 years of war in Afghanistan, they 
should consider the unhappy group of glassy-eyed men gathered in a dusty, 
wind-swept cemetery in the Pakistani border city of Quetta.

On a recent day, Atta Mohammed Bali, 53, emerged from his drug den in the 
cemetery--the ruins of a former police post--and looked back on his life.

"It has spoiled my life," he said through gaunt cheeks and a mournful 
demeanor, recalling jobs lost, his ruined marriage and his mother dying 
brokenhearted. Once a self-styled "big fish" in the trade, he now cadges 
money from relatives and neighbors to pay for a gram-a-day habit.

Bali and his friends crouch together under filthy blankets to get their 
hits. Not far away, children gambol between the mounds of raised earthen 
graves and the weather-eroded tombstones. It is a bleak place.

Addicts rarely inject heroin here, and when they do, they often die because 
the drugs aren't properly diluted. These addicts prefer to smoke: They 
place a small amount of heroin on a piece of foil from a cigarette pack, 
hold a flame underneath and frantically inhale the smoke through thin metal 
pipettes.

Bali says he has already seen the price of heroin falling because of the 
rumors of war in Afghanistan. In the last 15 days, he says, the price has 
fallen from about $5 a gram to about $2.

And if war actually breaks out. "Then there will be more heroin," he said, 
"and the prices will fall some more."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom