Pubdate: Wed, 11 Apr 2007
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2007 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.mercurynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Jason Straziuso, Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Afghanistan
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Taliban
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/poppy+farming
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

POPPIES AIDING TALIBAN FIGHT AGAINST U.S., NATO

Afghan Farmers Ignoring Crop Ban

CHINAR, Afghanistan - 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 religious militia nets tens of millions of 
dollars 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 Koran 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 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 stated that the militia virtually 
eliminated poppies after leader Mullah Mohammad Omar banned them in July 2000.

Diplomats at the time believed the Taliban, pariah because of its 
violations of human rights, 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 Spec. Zach Khan, a cultural adviser in the U.S. Army who 
was born in Pakistan.

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 who 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 
counternarcotics.

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."

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, Costa said.

"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. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake