Daily times March 23, 2005
EDITORIAL: Afghanistan — a narcotics paradise
Addressing a big international conference on narcotics in Islamabad on Monday, Major General Nadeem Ahmad, director general of Pakistan’s Anti-Narcotics Force, (ANF) has stated that around 70 percent of the narcotics manufactured in Afghanistan were either smuggled to, or transited through, Pakistan. The conference was told that opium production in Afghanistan had broken all previous records: the area of poppy cultivation there jumped from 80,000 hectares in 2003 to 206,700 hectares in 2004. This production was converted into heroin and smuggled across the 2,500 kilometre-long porous border into Pakistan, for onward journey to Iran, the Gulf and Europe.
There was a time in the 1980s when Pakistan was deeply involved in the processing of opium, and many influential people in the country were involved in its smuggling. But that is no longer the case. Last year, the total area under poppy cultivation in Pakistan was 6,694 hectares, out of which 78 percent has been eradicated, according to the ANF. There are about four million drug addicts in Pakistan, of which 500,000 are said to be chronic heroin users and 60,000 to 100,000 intravenous drug users. ANF, with hardly a couple of thousand personnel at its disposal, is humbled by the enormity of the challenge. Afghanistan remains in a state of war and the border is too long for the ANF to monitor. What it is supposed to fight is an Afghan poppy crop of about 4,200 tons this year, which can produce 360 metric tons of heroin.
The truth is that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has shot up after the 2001 invasion. The American commanders decided to get the Afghan warlords to fight the Taliban. But the warlords, of course, decided to do something else: they want to keep the Taliban pot boiling and cash in on the incentives that NATO forces are offering. There is the direct cash handout from the Americans, but there is much else too. The bounty of smuggling of food through Afghanistan to Central Asia is the big spinout. As they become rich, the warlords assert territorial control over the people. They have been able to maintain well-paid militias and keep them armed with good weapons. Control over territories has led directly to a revival of “cash crop” poppy cultivation. In consequence, we have a record poppy cultivation figure that beats anything that ever took place during the war against the Soviet Union.
Today the neo-con hype in Washington is about Al Qaeda having benefited from the high heroin production of the Taliban to buy low enriched uranium for its dirty nuclear bombs. In this context President Bush stated on November 15, 2001 that: “The Taliban government and Al Qaeda — the evil ones — use heroin trafficking in order to fund their murder. And one of our objectives is to make sure that Afghanistan is never used for that purpose again”. As he spoke, however, the Taliban had actually cut the poppy growing by about 95 percent, starting 2000! At that point, the production figure was historically low at 185 tons. Therefore the one big failure of the United States in Afghanistan is reflected in the record heroin production figure of last year. And there is no sign that this will come down, as the warlords are still in the government and one of them is running the Afghan army. *
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