THE TALIBAN: JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS

The War On Terrorism May Mean A War On Drugs

As part of its crackdown on terrorism, the United States has opened a
campaign against the terrorists' financial assets. Accounts traced to
Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network are to be found and frozen.
One of the terrorists's most important financial assets, however,
might be harder to tackle: the money that comes from drug trafficking.

The cash generated by drug sales, even if unlaundered in offshore
havens, can still fund terrorist operations. Afghanistan's poppy
fields have long supplied the world with heroin, but never on the
present scale. "The national crisis caused by three decades of
permanent war has made drug production an important - and often the
only available - source of income for Afghan peasants," says Major
General Alexander Lyakhovski, a top Russian military expert on
Afghanistan. Under the Taliban, Lyakhovski says, Afghanistan has
emerged as the world's main supplier of opium and heroin. According
to Russian law enforcement officials, Afghanistan currently grows
opium poppies on 90,000 hectares, yielding some 5,000 tons of raw
opium a year. Heroin is processed from this raw material in over 400
labs spread all over the country.

Last week, the Moscow-based daily Izvestiya quoted Colonel Sergei
Volgin of the Russian Drug Enforcement Agency as saying that in 1999
the Taliban cleared $200 million from opium traffic. To appease world
public opinion and prove that the Taliban are good Muslims, Taliban
leader Mullah Omar signed a decree in July 2000 banning the
cultivation of opium poppies. But the decree was just a smokescreen,
according to Lyakhovski. "In reality," he says, "The Taliban
encourage opium production. They clamped a 10% tax on all drug
production in the country and use the proceeds to arm their troops."

The Russians claim the Taliban now control up to 45% of the world's
black market in heroin. Their opponents, the Northern Alliance, do
not seem to be doing as well: according to Lyakhovski, the
anti-Taliban group accounts for just 6% to 7% of national opium
production. Colonel Sergei Volgin told Izvestiya that 90% of the
opium and heroin on the Russian black market comes from Afghanistan.
His figures for Western Europe and the U.S. are 70% and 20% to 30%,
respectively. To deprive the terrorists of this source of income will
involve a lot more than just freezing bank accounts.