Pubdate: Sun, 30 Sep 2001
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2001 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Tom Hundley

PANICKED OPIUM TRADERS UNLOAD HUGE STOCKS

Price Plummets As Refugees Seek Cash In Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Just as the Dow Jones industrial average fell 
precipitously in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the U.S., so did the 
main economic marker in the ramshackle street bazaars of Pakistan's North 
West Frontier province.

Traders in Peshawar reported that the price of opium had plunged from $700 
a kilo to $90 since Sept. 11. They blamed the drop on panic selling by 
Afghan traffickers and refugees who have been crossing the border into 
Pakistan ahead of anticipated U.S. military strikes.

"The refugees are selling their valuables, and this includes opium, so 
right now there's a glut on the market," a senior international law- 
enforcement official said.

Feeding the West's voracious appetite for heroin, which is made from opium, 
is one of the few signs of economic life in Afghanistan, where the per 
capita GDP is less than $800 and a quarter of the children die before their 
5th birthday.

Five years ago, Afghanistan passed Burma as the leader in opium production. 
Today, it is responsible for about 70 percent of the total world production.

The drug trade has become an important source of revenue for the Taliban 
regime, which levies a 10 percent tax on peasant farmers who sell raw opium 
to dealers. That generated about $10 million for the Taliban last year and 
$18 million the year before that, according to the UN's Drug Control Program.

Given the Taliban's extreme vision of Islam, its leaders have had to 
improvise a somewhat ambiguous theology on drugs. The regime has decreed 
that drug use and the sale of drugs to users are un-Islamic, but it 
accommodates the economic necessity of peasant farmers who grow opium 
poppies and produce raw opium as a means of survival. It also has found it 
politically expedient to coexist with the local drug lords.

Last year, after several years of negotiations with the Taliban, the UNDCP 
persuaded Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's spiritual leader, to issue a 
decree banning the cultivation of opium poppy.

"The Taliban took a unilateral decision. It was unconditional, linked to a 
religious theme," said Bernard Frahi, UNDCP program director in Islamabad.

Omar's word is writ in Afghanistan, and U.S. officials who toured the 
country in June confirmed that the opium poppy had been eradicated in all 
areas controlled by the Taliban.

For its efforts, the Taliban leadership hoped it would get diplomatic 
recognition and economic aid for farmers who had given up their most 
reliable cash crop.

Taliban Motives Questioned

International narcotics officials were not satisfied. They suspected that 
traffickers and farmers had stockpiled part of the previous year's bumper 
crop. Some suggested that the Taliban, in cahoots with traffickers, may 
have implemented the ban to prop up prices that had slipped as a result of 
a market oversupply in 1999 and 2000.

The sudden glut in Peshawar last week would seem to bear out those suspicions.

In the present climate of extreme tension between the U.S. and Afghanistan, 
some U.S. officials have made extravagant claims about the Afghan drug 
trade being used to finance international terrorism, linking it to Osama 
bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network.

Top international law-enforcement experts are skeptical.

"It could be argued that Osama bin Laden profits from the protection of the 
Taliban, and the Taliban profits from drug trafficking, but we have no 
corroborated evidence that he has any direct involvement in drug 
trafficking," said a senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The heroin trade from the so-called Golden Crescent is controlled by 
tightly knit networks of tribes and families that straddle the Afghan- 
Pakistani border. Unlike the drug cartels of South America and Southeast 
Asia, these networks are virtually impossible to infiltrate, 
law-enforcement officials say.

The opium poppy is cultivated by peasants for whom it is a cash crop as 
well as a source of credit and savings. "The farmers are not criminals. 
They would be happy to plant something else provided we help them," Frahi said.

Opium and the cultivation of opium poppies are deeply rooted in the culture 
here, but cultivation on an industrial scale did not occur until the Soviet 
invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Weapon Against Soviet Troops

To counter the Soviets, the CIA began to recruit, arm and train thousands 
of mujahedeen--holy warriors--from throughout the Middle East. From the 
outset, the CIA recognized the potential of stimulating drug production to 
finance the operation and to spread addiction among the poorly disciplined 
Soviet troops.

President Jimmy Carter rejected using drugs as a weapon of war, but when 
the Reagan administration came to power in 1981, CIA Director William Casey 
jumped at it, according to the memoirs of some of the key players in the 
operation.

How much of a role the CIA played in promoting the Afghan heroin trade is 
unclear. The evidence is mostly circumstantial, but certainly the Soviet 
army withdrew from the country in 1989 with a drug problem that still 
plagues Russian society.

When the Soviets withdrew, Afghanistan and Pakistan were producing about 
800 tons of raw opium each per year. Since then, Pakistani production has 
fallen to near zero, while Afghanistan's increased to 4,600 tons during the 
record 1999 harvest.

Pakistan, which had virtually no drug addiction problem before 1979, now 
has about 4 million addicts. The government cracked down on traffickers and 
stepped up development assistance to farmers to get them to plant crops 
other than poppies.

Pakistan was declared "poppy-free" this year, although some would argue the 
problem merely moved to Afghanistan.

Still, Frahi was heartened by this year's eradication of poppy cultivation 
in Afghanistan.

"Without spending a single dollar, based on advocacy alone, we managed the 
elimination of opium in Afghanistan," he said.

But he acknowledged that the triumph is likely to be short-lived. With the 
U.S. threatening Afghanistan with military strikes, impoverished farmers 
will feel pressure to revert to their most reliable cash crop.

Planting season begins in a few weeks. Drug monitors think the Taliban 
already has given farmers the go-ahead.
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