Pubdate: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 Source: Chicago Tribune (IL) Copyright: 2004 Chicago Tribune Company Contact: http://www.chicagotribune.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82 Author: Liz Sly, Tribune foreign correspondent Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/areas/afghanistan Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/opium OPIUM CASH FUELS TERROR, EXPERTS SAY Taliban, Al Qaeda Profit From Trade In Afghanistan KABUL -- Evidence is mounting that profits from Afghanistan's booming opium economy are funding the revived Taliban insurgency in the south and east of the country, as well as the remnants of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. Drug experts and diplomats say they do not know exactly how much of the $3 billion-a-year drug business is finding its way to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Hezb-i-Islami group loyal to fundamentalist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. But they are certain that all three groups are profiting to some degree and that drugs are playing an increasingly important role in fueling the resurgence of terrorist networks that U.S. forces came to Afghanistan to dismantle. "Any operation that Al Qaeda or the Taliban could conceive of could be funded right now," said one diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "In terms of their needs, it's an unlimited source of financing." Mirwais Yasini, head of Afghanistan's Counter Narcotics Directorate, estimates the Taliban and its allies derived more than $150 million over the past year from drugs. That money, he said, "is being used directly against the Afghan government and the international forces." As a conference began Sunday in Kabul to discuss ways to address the drug problem, Antonio Maria Costa, the director of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime, said he had seen "mounting evidence of drug money being used to finance criminal activities, including terrorism." While the potentially destabilizing effect of the drug economy on Afghanistan has long been recognized, investigators only recently have drawn a link between drugs and terrorism. Exactly how the cash flows is not clearly understood. Twentyfold increase since '01 Within a year of the Taliban's collapse, Afghanistan had regained its rank as the world's leading producer of opium, supplying 75 percent of the heroin available. After last year's bumper harvest of 3,900 tons of opium, the UN reported that poppy cultivation has increased almost twentyfold since 2001. The drug economy now is at least as big as the legal economy, contributing $1.5 billion annually to the farmers who cultivate poppies and as much again to the traffickers, middlemen and processors who refine the opium into heroin. "With the amount of cash flowing around the countryside, it's very easy to mobilize forces and pay people for terror attacks," said Adam Bouloukos of the UN drug and crime office in Kabul. "The only way they can pay for their troops is through this opium economy because the country produces very little else." Despite long-standing suspicions voiced by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that Al Qaeda is involved in heroin trafficking, hard evidence linking bin Laden and his network directly to the drug business is difficult to come by, investigators say. The recent U.S. Navy seizures in the Persian Gulf of several small boats carrying heroin and hashish along with alleged Al Qaeda operatives offered the first firm indication of a link between the terrorist network and drug trafficking. But the boats only proved something that investigators long suspected; that Al Qaeda has been piggybacking on the routes used by drug smugglers to shift its own operatives. Military officials believe many Al Qaeda fighters escaped from Afghanistan into Iran and Pakistan using traditional drug-smuggling routes. More worrying, according to diplomatic sources in Kabul, are reports that Al Qaeda operatives in Peshawar, Pakistan, recently have been taking delivery of about 4,400 pounds of processed heroin every two months, which would net the organization $36 million over a year at current street values in Pakistan. "We believe that Al Qaeda is actually getting into the direct business of heroin," said one source. "What we believe is that Al Qaeda is getting the heroin here, moving it to Pakistan and marketing it." Despite the Taliban regime's prohibition on poppy cultivation in 2000 as "un-Islamic," it quickly became clear that the ban was part of a strategy to restrict the supply of opium, drive up the price, then profit by selling confiscated stockpiles into the market. According to a former Taliban Interior Ministry official, as much as 2,000 tons of that stockpile, referred to as "Mullah Omar's stash" in reference to former Taliban leader Mohammed Omar, remained unsold when the Taliban government collapsed. Taliban-smuggler alliance The Taliban continues to cooperate closely with known smugglers, such as Haji Bashar Noorzai, a former adviser to Omar. Noorzai, who was known as the country's biggest drug dealer during the Taliban regime, is still helping the Taliban and still smuggling drugs, offering an example of the symbiotic relationship between the Taliban and drug networks, officials say. "It's both of them helping each other," said Yasini. "The Taliban provide security for the traffickers and the traffickers fund the Taliban." Assumptions that the Taliban's money must be coming from neighboring Pakistan, either from the government's secretive Inter-Services Intelligence agency or from sympathizers in Pakistan's powerful Islamic fundamentalist parties, are being reassessed in light of the group's drug involvement, according to diplomats in Kabul. Last summer, hundreds of Taliban recruits crossed the border from Pakistan with instructions to carry out attacks on U.S. forces, aid workers and Afghan government forces. Many were driving new motorcycles; others had been promised money in return for carrying out attacks. The latest intelligence reports indicate that Taliban leaders are paying foot soldiers up to $17 a day, and that the going rate for planting a car bomb is $25,000. "We don't believe they're generating that money in the madrassas [Islamic religious schools]," one diplomat said. "We believe the money is moving from here to the madrassas to fund their recruitment and training." Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami, which is fighting U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, has a history of involvement in drugs back to the days of the jihad against the Soviet Union, and the sources say his group is involved at every stage of the opium process, from farming to processing heroin. There is a growing recognition of the need to do more to solve the drug problem, but there is no consensus on how. After a poorly funded and poorly executed eradication program in the first year after the Taliban collapsed, some nations, including Britain, have advocated a more muscular approach, using military resources to strike at drug targets. The British have trained a 110-member Afghan Special Counter Narcotics Force, which went into action last month in the northern province of Badakhshan. A U.S. warplane was called in to provide air support, bombing and destroying a heroin laboratory. Limited U.S. resources But the U.S. military is deeply reluctant to become entangled in a Colombia-style drug war that would divert resources away from the hunt for terrorists, and diplomats say operations such as the one in Badakhshan are unlikely to be repeated. "Our resources here are finite," said Lt. Gen. David Barno, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. "Our focus has to remain on security." Tough action against drugs also would risk alienating those who support the U.S. presence. It isn't only terrorists who are profiting from the drug business; America's friends and allies in the administration of President Hamid Karzai also are deeply entangled. The UN says opium poppy cultivation was recorded in 28 of the 32 provinces it surveyed last year. Poppy-farming families earned on a average $3,900 last year, a small fortune in a country where per capita incomes are only a little over $200. The opium business has permeated almost every layer of Afghan society, from the small-time farmers who plant it to the local commanders who smuggle it and the senior government officials who accept payoffs to turn a blind eye, diplomats say. With the drug economy so entrenched, it won't be easy to eliminate it, officials say. "We're looking at the long haul, 10 years or more," said one Western diplomat in Kabul. "But it's now clear that whatever else we do here, if we don't tackle drugs, we won't win the war on terrorism." - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin