NARCOTICS, AFGHANISTAN AND TERRORISTS

If a narco-state can be defined as a nation where the production and
export of illegal drugs comprises the equivalent of about 50 percent
of that country's legitimate gross domestic product, then Afghanistan
is a narco-state.

The numbers are staggering. According to the U.N. World Drug Report
for 2007, which was issued in July, Afghanistan is home to 82 percent
of the area throughout the world that is devoted to the cultivation of
opium. Because Afghan poppies generate better yields than can be found
elsewhere, the country was responsible for 92 percent of the opium
produced in the world last year. The U.N. estimates that "around 92
percent of the world's heroin comes from poppies grown in
Afghanistan." The 2007 World Drug Report revealed that "[t]here are
indications that a small but increasing proportion of opiates from
Afghanistan are being trafficked to North America." That means that
Taliban-controlled areas in southern Afghanistan, where much of the
recent increases in opium output have occurred, are effectively
selling heroin to American addicts to finance their military
operations against U.S. and allied forces.

In 2006, Afghan farmers produced 6,100 metric tons (a metric ton
equals 2,200 pounds) of opium, while farmers throughout the rest of
the world cumulatively harvested 510 metric tons. Ten years earlier,
Afghanistan produced 2,248 metric tons of poppies, representing 52
percent of world output. As recently as 2001, when the then-governing
Taliban had essentially eradicated opium production in Afghanistan,
only 185 metric tons (11 percent of the world total) were produced
there, according to the U.N. report. Since the U.S. military overthrew
the Taliban during the fall of 2001 after Afghanistan-based al Qaeda
attacked the United States on September 11, Afghan opium output,
measured in metric tons, has increased to 3,400 (2002), 3,600 (2003),
4,200 (2004), 4,100 (2005) and 6,100 (2006).

As indicated above, opium production in Afghanistan increased 49
percent last year, rising from 4,100 metric tons in 2005 (when Afghan
opium comprised 89 percent of the world's total) to 6,100 metric tons
in 2006. In other words, while opium production declined by 10 metric
tons in the rest of the world between 2005 and 2006, it increased by
2,000 tons in Afghanistan. That means that Afghanistan accounted for
more than 100 percent of the worldwide increase in opium last year.
Whereas Afghanistan is now producing more than three times the 1,980
metric tons of opium it harvested 15 years earlier, Myanmar is now
producing less than one-fifth (315 metric tons) of its output in 1991
(1,728 metric tons). If Afghan opium output last year were at its 1991
level, world opium output would have been about a third of its actual
level.

The area devoted to opium production in Afghanistan increased by
nearly 60 percent last year, rising from 104,000 hectares to 165,000
hectares, its highest level ever. (A hectare equals 2.47 acres.) From
1991 through 2000, the Afghan area devoted to opium cultivation
averaged 63,600 hectares, more than 100,000 fewer than last year's.
Only six of Afghanistan's 34 provinces were free of opium production
in 2006. In recent years, opium output has especially increased in
Helmand province, where many Taliban fighters, no longer interested in
eradicating opium, are located.

While total Afghan opium output increased by nearly 50 percent last
year, prices "at the farm gate" fell by only 17 percent. Thus, total
revenues soared for the 2.9 million Afghans involved in growing
poppies. Moreover, because "Afghan opium is increasingly being
processed into morphine and heroin within Afghanistan," the U.N.
report estimates that the "total export value of opium to neighboring
countries" totaled $3.1 billion last year, which was nearly half the
size of Afghanistan's legal economy ($6.7 billion). "Gross trafficking
profits to Afghan traffickers" totaled $2.34 billion, which buys a lot
of AK-47s and the increasingly sophisticated improvised explosive
devices that Afghan insurgents have been using in much greater numbers
in recent months.