Taliban Netting Millions From Poppies
Pastor Dale Morgan
Taliban Netting Millions From Poppies*
Tuesday April 10, 2007 7:01 PM
By JASON STRAZIUSO
Associated Press Writer
CHINAR, Afghanistan (AP) - When the Taliban ordered Afghanistan's fields
cleared of opium poppies seven years ago because of Islam's ban on
drugs, fearful farmers complied en masse.
Today, officials say the militia nets tens of millions by forcing
farmers to plant poppies and taxing the harvest, driving the country's
skyrocketing opium production to fund the fight against what they
consider an even greater evil - U.S. and NATO troops.
``Drugs are bad. The Quran is very clear about it,'' said Gafus
Scheltem, NATO's political adviser in southern Afghanistan. But to fight
the enemy, he said, ``all things are allowed. They need money and the
only way they can get money is from Arabs that support them in the
(Persian) Gulf, or poppies.''
Corrupt government officials, both low-level police and high-level
leaders, also protect the drug trade in exchange for bribes, a recent
U.N. report found. Warlords and major landowners welcome the instability
the Taliban brings to the country's southern regions, causing poppy
eradication efforts to fail.
The Taliban denies it supports poppies. Mullah Abdul Qassim, a top
commander in Helmand province, told The Associated Press last month that
the militia's goal is to defeat foreign troops and it doesn't have time
to regulate poppies. He noted that the militia virtually eliminated
poppies after leader Mullah Omar banned them in July 2000.
Diplomats at the time believed the Taliban, pariahs because of their
violations of human rights standards, was seeking international
respectability and financial aid. Washington sent $43 million in
emergency funds to Afghanistan after poppy growing was banned.
But Western officials say it appears the ban was meant at least in part
to increase the price of opium stockpiles.
``Originally they said 'It's bad for you, it's against Islam,' but when
they realized how much money they could make off of it they said it was
OK to grow but not consume it. That's the hypocrisy of it,'' said Spc.
Zach Khan, a cultural adviser in the U.S. Army who was born in Pakistan
and lives in Nashville, Tenn.
The Taliban is also telling farmers in the south they must grow poppies
but if the militia returns to power, the plants will once again be
outlawed, said a Western official familiar with Afghanistan's drug trade
who asked not to be identified because of the nature of his job.
Afghanistan's opium crop grew 59 percent in 2006 to 407,000 acres,
yielding a record crop of 6,100 tons, enough to make 610 tons of heroin
- 90 percent of the world's supply, according to the U.N. Western and
Afghan officials say they expect a similar crop this year.
The street value of the heroin was estimated at $3.5 billion, said
Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and
Crime. Of that, Afghan farmers earned an estimated $700 million last
year, while the bulk of the rest went to traffickers who smuggled the
drugs to the Middle East and Europe.
No one knows the Taliban's exact take from poppy cultivation, and
guesses range from the low tens of millions of dollars to an estimate of
$140 million by Gen. Khodaidad, Afghanistan's deputy minister for
counter-narcotics. His figure was based on various Taliban taxes that
could add up to 20 percent of the farmers' $700 million.
The Taliban uses the money to buy weapons and pay soldiers, and as one
Western official put it: ``You can buy quite a bit of insurgency for $10
million.''
In Helmand province - the Taliban's main stronghold - poppy farmer
Karimullah Khan said the traditional religious tax, called an oshar,
used to be paid to religious leaders. Now, he said, ``If the government
is weak in some districts, and the Taliban is stronger, we give the
oshar to the Taliban.''
For farmers, poppies pay up to 10 times as much as wheat. Militants
protect the poppy fields, and corrupt government officials are paid to
turn a blind eye.
``The Taliban need the money and the narco-traffickers need the
instability. In chaos, there's profit,'' U.S. Army Lt. Col. Brian Mennes
said during a recent mission in southern Afghanistan.
The Taliban takes a cut all along the way - a percentage at harvest, at
heroin labs, and to ensure the crop's passage through dangerous lands,
said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs
and Crime.
``Now if you put all these percentages together, out of an opium economy
of about $3.5 billion, you get a significant amount of money which could
be potentially seen as the funding of terrorism,'' Costa said last month.
Of five poppy farmers in southern Afghanistan that spoke to The
Associated Press, three paid bribes to the Taliban and to local police,
who work for the Afghan Interior Ministry, which a U.N. report said has
many officials involved in the drug trade.
Some farmers paid in opium, others in cash. Two farmers who live in more
secure areas paid local clerics a 10 percent religious tax.
The mountain town of Chinar straddles the Kandahar-Helmand border and is
anchored by a large, mud-brick compound housing district police
headquarters. Twenty yards away sits a large field of flourishing
poppies, with other fields all around. Khan said most farmers are forced
to grow the crop by the Taliban - but the police are also implicated.
Capt. Said Farad, an Afghan army commander based just outside the town
on a recent NATO operation, said the district chief in the region has to
cooperate with the Taliban or face death. The last three chiefs sent
here by the governor were killed, he said.
``The police definitely have a hand in the poppies. Those two police
vehicles near the compound help with the drug smuggling and run supplies
for the Taliban,'' Farad said. ``Nobody will kill the current chief
because he has a deal with the Taliban.''
At a recent council of elders put together by U.S. forces operating
around Chinar, a man with a black turban and gray beard defended the
residents.
``The only problem with these people is poverty. Whatever they're doing
they're doing out of poverty,'' he said.
Farid Jan, a poppy farmer in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar, said he
pays 10 percent of his crop to the Taliban and negotiates a separate
percentage for police.
Last year, a pound of opium fetched up to $100 in the province, though
less in other areas, the U.N. said. This year, Jan expects to earn
$130,000 - before ``taxes'' - on his land, 10 times what he would make
from wheat.
``Now you tell me what's the best crop for us?'' he said.
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Associated Press reporter Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.