Afghanistan .......

The Golden Crescent Drug Triangle


The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA's covert operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. 11 In this regard, Alfred McCoy's study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, "the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin producer, supplying 60 percent of U.S. demand. In Pakistan, the heroin-addict population went from near zero in 1979... to 1.2 million by 1985 -- a much steeper rise than in any other nation":12

CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade. As the Mujahideen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection of Pakistan Intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. During this decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests ... U.S. officials had refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies `because U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.' In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan operation, Charles Cogan, admitted the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. `Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn't really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade,'... `I don't think that we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout.... There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.'13


Taken from: The Golden Crescent Drug Triangle



UK soldiers killed in poppy growing area of Afghanistan [video report]

Monday July 3, 2006
By Tom Coghlan

Two British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, as Western officials in the country admitted yesterday that despite a US$1 billion ($1.6 billion) a year campaign to curb it the country is facing its largest ever poppy harvest.

The new British deaths, the fourth and fifth in three weeks, come as Western military commanders and counter-narcotics officials appear increasingly at odds over how to approach the drugs problem in the south of the country, with military commanders fearful that drug eradication is acting as a recruiting sergeant for the Taleban.

"The trends indicate that the area of cultivation will be considerably higher than in 2004," said a representative of the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime, which will publish its annual report of the Afghan opium harvest in August.

2004 saw the largest ever area of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan of around 130,000 hectares.

Poor growing conditions that year mean that this year's harvest, with better conditions across the country, will produce the largest tonnage of opium ever.

Afghanistan is single-handedly responsible for around 87 per cent of the world's opium and more than 90 per cent of the heroin consumed on British streets.

In 2005 the Karzai government announced a "jihad" on poppy production, backed by the near $1billion international campaign, which is led by Britain.

It produced a 21 per cent drop in the area of cultivation but those gains have now been wiped out.

Around a third of this year's harvest has come from a single province, Helmand, where 3300 British troops are heavily engaged against Taleban rebels.

Some military commanders now argue that eradication operations against poppy cultivation in the south should be suspended for a year or more.

"We may have to say to the farmer we are not yet ready to provide an alternative livelihood," one senior NATO officer told the Independent.

But counter-narcotics officials contend that a suspension of eradication produce a further surge in poppy production and help fund elements with a vested interest in maintaining the current instability.

The Afghan drugs economy is currently valued at US$2.7 billion, equivalent to more than 50 per cent of the legal economy.

By contrast the Afghan government managed to generate legal revenues, outside of foreign aid, totalling only US$330 million last year.

Farmers in the south claim that in the absence of any other economic activity, poppy cultivation and high wages paid by the Taleban to fight for them offer the only sources of income to huge numbers of unemployed young men.

Poppy cultivation, they say, is the only means of wealth creation without capital because the smugglers pay in advance.

In Washington there is increasing pressure for a more radical approach to the drugs problem with the threat of aerial eradication being held up as the ultimate sanction if the softer methods favoured by the British and Afghan governments don't work.

Western sources have told the Independent that US counter-narcotics teams are exploring the possibility of using a form of the defoliant Agent Orange.

The United Nations remains completely opposed to the move.


Taken from: Ukk soldeirs killed in poppy growing area of Afghanistan




Opium Production in Afghanistan has been a huge problem for the country since the downfall of the Taliban in 2001

The CIA estimates that one-third of Afghanistan's GDP comes from opium export, although the Asian Development Bank states a lower figure, namely $2.5 billion (12% of the GDP). At any rate, this is not only one of Kabul's most serious policy and law-enforcement challenges[1], but also one of the world's most serious problems.

The problem began with the Soviet invasion in 1979-80. As the government began to lose control of provinces, "warlordism" flourished and with it opium production as regional commanders searched for ways to generate money to purchase weapons, according to the UN.[2] (At this time the West was pursuing an "arms-length" supporting strategy of the Afghan freedom-fighters or Mujahidin, the main purpose being to cripple the USSR slowly into withdrawal rather than a quick and decisive overthrow).

When the Red Army was forced to withdraw in 1989, a power vacuum was created. Various Mujahidin factions started fighting against each other for power. With the discontinuation of Western support, they resorted ever more to poppy cultivation to finance their military existence.

Some local opium dealers, looking for a safe operational hub, joined forces with the more fanatic sections of the Mujahidin supported by Arab extremists like Osama bin Laden as well as the Pakistani secret intelligence service ISI to form the Taliban movement towards the end of 1994;[3] see also BBC report here [4].

The Taliban, having taken control of 90% of the country, actively encouraged poppy cultivation. With this, they not only fulfilled their promises and obligations to their partners - the regional mafia - but also increased their own desperately needed income by imposing taxes on local farmers and through subsidies by international organised crime gangs. According to the above UN source, Afghanistan saw a bumper opium crop of 4,600 million tonnes in 1999, which was the height of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

According to a Swiss security publication, 'SicherheitsForum' (April 2006, pp:56-57), this resulted in supply exceeding demand and a drop in the high-street price of heroin and morphine in the West, endangering the profitability of European drug smugglers. To stop this trend, Westerns international drug barons demanded a reduction in supply. The regional mafia instructed the Taliban accordingly. It is alleged in the report that, Obeying his financiers, Mullah Omar (the Taliban leader) issued a ban on poppy cultivation "on religious grounds", resulting in one of the lowest opium production levels in 2002. [5]

The news was received positively by the international community as a sign of “reform” and compromise by the Taliban. The topic is still (May 2006) benchmarked with the failed efforts of Afghanistan’s current government during the tenure of which opium production has increased again. If 'SicherheitsForum' is correct, it is ironic how collaboration between international terrorism and organised crime could cause some global media to talk positively about the Taliban.

Following the US-led coalition war that led to the defeat of the Taliban in November 2001, essentially collapsing the economy, the scarcity of other sources of revenue forced many of the country's farmers to resort back to growing opium for export.(1,300 km² in 2004 according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime). Afghanistan is presently the greatest illicit opium producer in the world, before Burma (Myanmar), part of the so-called "Golden Triangle".

The main obstacle to eradicating poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is the US forces' need for the warlords and their forces in hunting terrorists. In the absence of Taliban, the warlords largely control the opium trade but are also highly useful to the US forces in scouting, providing local intelligence, keeping their own territories clean from Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents, and even taking part in military operations.

Taken from: Opium Production in Afghanistan