AFGHAN OPIUM BENEFITS TALIBAN

Al-Qaida Protects Heroin Smugglers, Collects Drug Tax

WASHINGTON -- The Taliban government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist
organization al-Qaida are funded in part by the crimson opium poppies of
Afghanistan, officials and experts said.

"The Afghan drug trade has given direct financial support for the Taliban
regime to harbor international terrorists and at least indirectly assisted
Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terrorist network to attack the United
States," said Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., who chairs the House subcommittee
on drug policy.

Bin Laden's terrorist organization, which the Bush administration holds
responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, provides protection and
security for Taliban-backed drug smugglers, law enforcement sources said.

"Opium has been a way for the Taliban to finance its operations since the
mid-1990s," said Vince Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counterterrorism.
"It appears that bin Laden's organization has provided security for the
shipments and has collected a tax from the sales."

The Taliban, backed by bin Laden's organization, reaped a substantial cut
of the profits from an opium crop with an annual wholesale value of more
than $90 million, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.

That opium -- processed into heroin -- finds its ways to streets in Europe
and the United States, where it sells at huge markups.

Afghanistan has long had the world's largest opium crop. But that crop
exploded after the Taliban gained control of most of the country in 1996,
according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

In 1996, about 2,100 metric tons of opium was produced in Afghanistan. By
2000, that amount had grown to nearly 3,700 metric tons. Almost all of that
opium was grown in territory controlled by the Taliban.

Although the Taliban issued decrees that said selling and using drugs were
not in keeping with Islamic laws, its actions spoke louder, U.N. anti-drug
experts said.

"No major drug control objectives were achieved (by the Taliban) in 1998,"
said a report issued a year ago by the U.N.'s office of drug control
policy. "There were no verified instances in which narcotics or precurser
chemicals were seized or destroyed. There were no reports that drug
traffickers or local drug dealers were arrested or prosecuted. And there
were no verified destruction of morphine or heroin laboratories."

The opium grown in Afghanistan is converted there and elsewhere into
heroin, government officials said, by scraping a thick, gummy sap from cut
poppy bulbs. That sap can be distilled into heroin powder. Ten pounds of
opium can yield about a pound of pure heroin.

From the mountains of Afghanistan, the opiates are smuggled through Iran
and Turkey, and into the Balkan countries of Albania, Bosnia and elsewhere,
experts said.

The drugs then make their way to Western Europe and eventually around the
world.

Last year, more than a ton of Afghan heroin, with a street value of a
quarter of a billion dollars, was consumed in the United States, government
officials said.

In the summer of 2000, the Taliban announced they were going to eliminate
opium production, saying it was un-Islamic. That decree was issued by
Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, to great international fanfare.

The production of opium in Afghanistan fell to almost zero after that, U.S.
drug policy experts said. But the sale of opium already stored in
warehouses inside Afghanistan remained constant, convincing Western
analysts that the "ban" was mostly a marketing ploy to support the price of
opium.

"At the time the Taliban instituted its ban, our information was that the
price of opium was at an all-time low," said Bradley Hittle, a top drug
supply analyst at the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"There already existed a lot of opium that could be moved to market. That
opium increased in value tenfold," Hittle said.

U.S. administration drug policy officials noted that even as the Taliban
banned the growing of opium poppies, they permitted the importation of
large quantities of acetic anhydride, a chemical used to convert opium into
heroin.

As the perceived ban increased the value of existing opium in Afghanistan,
it did not interrupt the flow of the drug. "Opium continued to flow out of
Afghanistan at about the same rate," Hittle said.

The United Nations has drawn a direct link between Afghan farmers growing
opium poppies and the Taliban government.

The United Nations estimates that "the Taliban derived between $15 million
and $27 million per year from taxes levied on opium production," according
to a report cited by Souder's subcommittee.

Souder has scheduled a hearing today into the role of drug smuggling in
funding the Taliban and al-Qaida.

A memo prepared by the subcommittee quoted a State Department report from
earlier this year that concluded, "the Taliban promote poppy cultivation to
finance weapons purchases as well as military operations."

The U.S. government long had suspected bin Laden's al-Qaida organization
played a role in the Taliban's drug smuggling efforts, officials said.

"Administration sources have indicated that bin Laden most likely profits
indirectly from narcotics trade by offering protection and security
services to the owners of heroin laboratories," said a House memo.

The use of drugs to fund terrorist operations has been documented by U.S.
intelligence agencies, according to recent statements.

In March, CIA Director George Tenet said in congressional testimony, "The
drug threat is increasingly intertwined with other threats. ... Some
Islamic extremists view drug trafficking as a weapon against the West and a
source of revenue to fund their operations."

A recent assessment by the United Nations drew an even more direct link
between the production of opium for heroin in Afghanistan and the funding
of terrorist groups.

"Funds raised from the production and trading of opium and heroin are used
by the Taliban to buy arms and other war material, and to finance the
training of terrorists and support the operations of these extremists,"
said a report by the U.N. committee of experts on Afghanistan.

Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the Center for the Study of Corruption, has
done extensive research on the way drug trafficking funds international
terrorism.

"The al-Qaida organization is independent of the Taliban, but they are the
ambassadors for the group's message. They get whatever funds they need,"
she said.

For the Taliban and their allies like al-Qaida, "narcotics are the best
possible weapon. They generate funds while corrupting the moral fiber of
the enemy. Then it allows them to say that the enemy, Western democracy, is
corrupt," she said.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the bottom has fallen out of the
international opium market, Hittle said.

"Our most recent intelligence indicates that the price has fallen more than
50 percent," Hittle said. "What seems to have happened is that whoever was
holding opium at the time of the attacks is trying to sell it as fast as
possible."

Theories vary about the motives for the opium sell-off. Some see an effort
by the Taliban to generate cash to meet an expected military invasion.
Others say the market is glutted because Afghan farmers fear that the
Taliban regime soon may be defunct and the protection provided for
producing opium will disappear.

The Bush administration announced Monday the freezing of $6 million in
al-Qaida assets in about 50 bank accounts. European governments have frozen
another $30 million, officials said.

But some experts said rooting out the money supplies of terrorist
organizations will require an increased emphasis on disrupting the
international drug trade.

"The response to Sept. 11 should be a war on narco-terrorism as much as a
war on terrorism," Ehrenfeld said.