The Taliban and Opium

[attaboy]

I found this Economist article dated Oct. 2001. The Taliban complied with the UN request and banned production leading to a 95% drop in production from the previous year partly as an attempt to get recognised as the legitimate government of Afghanistan so they could qualify for aid and loans. They put all the other opium traders out of business by way of murder or intimidation by way of mutilation. Due to the ban pre 911 the drug was selling at $700 per kilo the highest price in ten years and after 911 the Taliban scambled for cash and dumped inventory on the market driving the price down to $100 per kilo.

(Hmmm... it looks like insider information. They knew who hit the WTC Towers and were cashing out bigtime.)

So banning opium production really wasn't a humanitarian effort or a will on their part to follow the teachings of Mohammend. It was a crude ruthless business manuveur to corner the market and drive prices up to gain maximum profit from their own inventory. The Taliban are back in business growing opium again. These guys have their own ambitions and plans. They went along with the UN request for their own selfish reasons not because it was the will of the US or anyone else. They aren't hapless victims caught up in the wake of US drug policy. They do what they want.

UN officials believe that 2,800 tonnes of opium, convertible into 280 tonnes of heroin, is in the hands of the Taliban.

UN officials say the current Afghan stockpile is enough to keep every addict in Europe supplied for three years.

Another powder trail
Oct 18th 2001 | GRAZ, KABUL AND TEHRAN
From The Economist print edition

The Taliban have another weapon: control of most of the world's heroin

ON SEPTEMBER 10th, the day before the terrorist onslaught on New York, fresh opium was selling in the markets of Afghanistan for as much as $700 a kilo, the highest level for almost a decade. Two weeks later, prices on the streets of Jalalabad or Kandahar had tumbled as low as $100 a kilo. Since Afghan opium accounts for about 70% of the world's heroin production, western countries now fear that, besides all the other problems stemming from that benighted place, they could soon face a flood of cheap Afghan heroin.
In the 1990s, when other forms of farming fell victim to an endless round of internecine wars, Afghanistan greatly increased its cultivation of opium. In 1989, the country produced nearly 1,200 tonnes. A decade later, the harvest had almost quadrupled to an estimated 4,600 tonnes. But by June 2000, in a bid for respectability, the Taliban had started to work with the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNODCCP), and banned the growing of opium. The ban slashed this year's harvest to a mere 185 tonnes, the lowest level in living memory and a 95% drop on the previous year. All that ended after September 11th, when the Taliban abruptly stopped co-operating with the UN.

By now only a few weeks of the autumn sowing season are left, and the American-led bombing campaign—particularly heavy around Kandahar, an important opium-growing region—will have disrupted the business. The ban, too, still remains officially in force. So it is hard to predict how big next spring's crop will be. But there are signs that the Afghan government is releasing on to the international market some of the vast stockpile of opium which has been built up during a series of bumper harvests. UN officials believe that 2,800 tonnes of opium, convertible into 280 tonnes of heroin, is in the hands of the Taliban, the al-Qaeda network of militant Islamists, and other Afghan and Pakistani drug lords.

On the wholesale market in Pakistan, this deadly harvest could be worth $1.4 billion. On the streets of London and Milan, processed into white powder, its ultimate value is estimated by Interpol and UN officials at between $40 billion and $80 billion. To put these figures in context, the retail turnover of the European heroin trade is estimated at $20 billion a year. UN officials say the current Afghan stockpile is enough to keep every addict in Europe supplied for three years. It is also enough to allow the Taliban and their allies to dominate the European, Russian and much of the Asian market for another two years, if they can retain control of the stockpile.

The Taliban probably have several motives for releasing the stockpile now. Possibly they are selling off opium to buy weapons, or to build up their supply of hard currency. They may also want to compound the social problems of the western governments which are now their enemies. Whatever the motive, the risk for Europe is awful to contemplate.

Afghanistan's position as the world's main supplier of heroin has been reinforced by 20 years of almost continuous war. It is a country with very little arable land; only 2.6m of its 65m hectares (250,000 square miles) are cultivated. In 1979, when the Soviet Union sent in its army, nearly 85% of the population was dependent on the rural economy. But the anti-Soviet struggle, followed by civil strife, had a disastrous effect on agriculture. A third of the country's farms were abandoned, two-thirds of its villages were bombed, and much of the rural workforce was forced by poverty, dislocation and drought to seek refuge outside the country or in cities such as Kabul and Kandahar.
As the old subsistence economy gave way to a monetised one, opium emerged as one of the few commodities that could quickly be converted into American dollars—which could, in turn, be used to buy arms. Afghanistan's plunge into war also coincided with a drop in production in three other important opium-growing countries. Turkey, Iran and Pakistan all started enforcing strict drug-control laws and bans on opium-growing. This meant that just as opium production was rising in Afghanistan, external factors allowed the country to grab a bigger share of the world market.
For the first few years after they took power in 1996, the Taliban had no compunction about encouraging the planting of opium. Like most food crops, however, opium can grow only on land that is properly irrigated or fed by rain. According to UN officials, the current food shortage partly reflects a conscious decision by the regime to promote the cultivation of opium rather than wheat.



continued in next post

[attaboy]

continued from above post


The new Silk Road

How does Afghan heroin reach western markets? Broadly speaking, there are two routes: one passing through Central Asia and Russia, the other through the Balkans.

Well before it reaches Western Europe—in Afghanistan itself, or else in Pakistan, Turkey or former Soviet states—the opium is converted into morphine and then into heroin. The “precursor” chemicals required for this process, such as acetic anhydride, are often diverted illegally from factories in Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan. In the ramshackle new states which until recently formed the soft underbelly of the Soviet Union, drug lords can rely both on lax laws and on the corruptibility of police and customs officers, whose wages are a pittance compared with the sums at stake in the narcotics business.
From these states, the lethal consignments—hidden in truckloads of raisins or walnuts, disguised as bags of flour, or else transported in rusting Soviet-era railway cars—take two different routes. The northern route follows the old Silk Road into Russia, the Baltic States, Poland, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. From there, it runs through Scandinavia, Germany and points farther west. The UNODCCP'S director, Pino Arlacchi, says that Russia's “new rich” are among the biggest potential growth markets for heroin-pushers.
Several other ex-Soviet republics, including Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, with good road and rail routes, have been described in American government reports as increasingly important conduits for heroin from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the German authorities have been struggling to staunch the flow of drugs through Poland. In 1999, for example, 80% of all heroin stopped on Germany's borders was seized at the Polish frontier.
Police are particularly concerned by the arrival on the international market of a strain of high-grade narcotic known as Heroin No. 4, or white heroin, which is estimated to be at least 80% pure. Recent seizures in Germany, Turkey, Finland and Poland have all proved to be white heroin trans-shipped via Central Asia from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The southern, or “Balkan”, route goes principally from Afghanistan to Turkmenistan, across the Caspian Sea, into the Caucasus, then into Turkey, from where the heroin is shipped to Albania and Italy. Other consignments cross Bulgaria and Macedonia in container lorries, finding their way to Serbia, Hungary and Austria. A second route goes through Albania, then across the Adriatic in speed-boats on nocturnal dashes to beaches on the eastern coast of Puglia, and then by motorway into Austria. A third route involves container vessels sailing from Constantza, on the Black Sea, to Turkey and on to Italy.
The one country that all drug traffickers try to avoid is Iran. Some 204 tonnes of opium and 29 tonnes of heroin and morphine were seized in Iran in 1999 by a combination of army battalions and police units deployed on the country's eastern and northern borders, accounting for 85% and 50% respectively of all seizures of opium and opium derivatives (heroin and morphine) in the world. (In Turkey, by contrast, only one-third of a tonne of opium was confiscated in the same year.) Hundreds of Iranian soldiers and policemen have been killed in gun battles with traffickers.


continued in next post

[attaboy]

continued from above post

As new routes are established to link the mountains north of Kandahar with the streets of Dublin and Barcelona, a vital role is being played by crime syndicates from Eastern Europe—Ukraine in particular—and the Balkans. Throughout Western Europe, police report that whole sectors of criminal activity are being taken over by ethnic-Albanian syndicates trading on their success as drug-smugglers.
These fraternities, whose origins may be in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia or in the long-established Albanian communities of southern Italy, have no compunction about doing business with Serbian gangsters. They share with them the proceeds from drug- and gun-running, as well as the traffic in prostitutes from Ukraine, Romania and Moldova. According to police, ethnic-Albanian drug-running families are almost impossible to infiltrate because of the closeness of the family and clan structure and the difficulty of the language.
In Prague, Albanians are fighting turf wars to oust Ukrainians controlling the heroin trade, while in London Jamaican pimps—not known for their respect for women's rights—complain of Albanian violence towards the East European prostitutes they control. When police in Oslo made Norway's largest-ever heroin seizure, they discovered that former fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army controlled the drug-distribution chain. Heroin-dealing in Switzerland is dominated by Albanians. This year, much of the money made went to buy arms for the rebels fighting in Macedonia and a strip of southern Serbia.
At the faceless, glass-fronted building in Vienna where UN officials try to keep tabs on this deadly traffic, more information seems to be available about prices in the dusty street markets of the Indian sub-continent than about dealings closer to home. But it is not hard to gather inklings, at least, of the web of connections which now links the bombed-out war zones of Afghanistan with ostensibly calm and prosperous places in Western Europe.
Less than an hour's drive from Vienna is the town of Graz, which serves as a sort of nodal point for connections to the Balkans. This year's October festival was a jolly, bucolic spectacle. But it was not difficult to spot, among the brass bands and folk-dancing, the furtive figures of heroin dealers from northern Albania, plying their trade with white-faced addicts.
Even these sad little transactions have consequences for places hundreds of miles away, says a senior UN police officer who helped to seize two truckloads of weapons—destined for the ethnic-Albanian rebels in Macedonia—at the border between Montenegro and Kosovo this year. He estimates that the anti-aircraft missiles, grenades and anti-tank rockets he captured were part of an arms deal worth around $4m. At least some of that was raised by selling, say, 20 kilos of heroin on the streets of Austria or Switzerland.

UN officials hold out some hope that the heroin market will tighten again once the Afghan stockpile disappears, especially if planting does not resume. The United States and its allies will try to persuade any post-Taliban regime to keep the ban in place. But in a wrecked country, in desperate need of funds, the addiction to opium money will be hard to break.

War and drugs | Another powder trail | Economist.com

[endure]

The '3rd world' is crying out for legitimate strong painkillers. Their requirements more or less match the output from Afghanistan. Unfortunately Afghanistan has been targeted as part of the 'war on drugs'. If the Afghanis were allowed to produce those drugs and sell them to 3rd world countries legitimately most of the reasons for the 'war' would disappear.

[attaboy]

^Iran has found a way to meet its needs. They rob drug smugglers.

The one country that all drug traffickers try to avoid is Iran. Some 204 tonnes of opium and 29 tonnes of heroin and morphine were seized in Iran in 1999 by a combination of army battalions and police units deployed on the country's eastern and northern borders, accounting for 85% and 50% respectively of all seizures of opium and opium derivatives (heroin and morphine) in the world.

[attaboy]

In case anyone missed it.

According to UN officials, the current food shortage partly reflects a conscious decision by the regime to promote the cultivation of opium rather than wheat.

The Taliban made sure to grow as much opium as possible at the expense of people going hungry so they'd have plenty of inventory. Then they cornered the market and jacked the price up. I guess it shoots holes in the argument that they were following the teachings of Mohammend when they banned cultivation of poppies.

[Storekeeper]

Why don't these groups ever use any of ther drug money to help poor Muslim people ?

[man with no head]

The same reason why the rich Western oil companies don't use their money to help poor Christians?

The money wasted in Iraq sure would help quite a number of uninsured children get health insurance. It would buy 2,000,000 homes for Americans with no homes or 30,000,000 new vehicles for poor Americans.

Perhaps the bigger question is who is getting the opium profits now?

[man with no head]

The '3rd world' is crying out for legitimate strong painkillers. Their requirements more or less match the output from Afghanistan. Unfortunately Afghanistan has been targeted as part of the 'war on drugs'. If the Afghanis were allowed to produce those drugs and sell them to 3rd world countries legitimately most of the reasons for the 'war' would disappear.

We can't legitimize natural drugs because Big Pharmeceutical won't be able to patent them and get a monopoly on new drugs.

[Boon Mee]

Breaking Big al-Qaeda Fish Caught

Seven al-Qaeda suspects arrested in eastern Afghanistan—including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Kabul - In an operation launched by Afghan coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan, a known al-Qaeda facilitator and six other suspected al-Qaeda associates were detained, coalition forces said.
The commander of the Hizb-i-Islami militia in Hafezan in the eastern province of Nangarhar, Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, was arrested after credible intelligence led Afghan and coalition forces to his compound, the statement said.

No shots were fired and there were no injuries reported. (Too bad)

Hikmatyar, the former prime minister of Afghanistan, announced jihad or holy war against what he called the US invasion of Afghanistan four and half years ago and the joint opposition of the Afghan government by Taliban and al-Qaeda in the fight against coalition forces

[attaboy]

But the Taliban did help SK. They gave guns to unemployed goons and they gave them authority to enforce Sharia Law in the streets as they saw fit. Here's a picture of a Taliban dispensing lessons on women. Nothing like a little domestic terror and intimidation to keep the people off balance.

The money wasted in Iraq sure would help quite a number of uninsured children get health insurance. It would buy 2,000,000 homes for Americans with no homes or 30,000,000 new vehicles for poor Americans.

No doubt about it. The money spent in Iraq could be used more wisely. Unfortunately, I think we have to see it through to the best outcome for them and us.

[Storekeeper]

It would buy 2,000,000 homes for Americans with no homes or 30,000,000 new vehicles for poor Americans.

Where we gonna go to steal more oil for those 30,000,000 new vehicles ?

[man with no head]

Who says they need to be running on oil?

[Storekeeper]

George told me so. It's gotta be true.

[Marmite the Dog]

Nothing like a little domestic terror and intimidation to keep the people off balance.

I see Bush is using the same tactics to stir the american people up too.

[attaboy]

^Rhetoric needn't intimidate or sustain fear. The USA is still free enough that the opposition can defeat Bush's words with their own resonable answers. They need to propose a better alternative.

[man with no head]

The problem with that approach is the instant association with 'pacifism' and 'appeasement' that comes with trying to offer alternatives.

"But they're soft on terrorism because they don't support our way of thinking."

The rhetoric now is nastier than it ever was during the Clinton years.

[attaboy]

^The problem is the Democrats have no credibility. From Clinton's general charactor to the constant fear rmongering over the economy to the constant shift in their attack as they desperatly seek an issue which will gain traction. The constant shift makes them look like what they are rudderless and insincere. They look like boobs. If they weren't boobs Bush's fear mongering could be quieted. Bush looks more appealing because he has stayed the course and remained consistent during troubled times while the Democrats have run from one side of the ship to the other yelling and screaming. The American public sense them as a problem and the Democrats are unable to reason with the public's senses. The people ain't buying what the Demos are selling and I don't think the people are sick enough of Bush to make significant changes this election.

[Mr Earl]

The same reason why the rich Western oil companies don't use their money to help poor Christians?

Another spurious remark which shows how unbelievably clueless you are.

Do a little research on the Rockefeller foundation (Standard Oil or Exxon).

[man with no head]

^The problem is the Democrats have no credibility. From Clinton's general charactor to the constant fear rmongering over the economy to the constant shift in their attack as they desperatly seek an issue which will gain traction. The constant shift makes them look like what they are rudderless and insincere. They look like boobs. If they weren't boobs Bush's fear mongering could be quieted. Bush looks more appealing because he has stayed the course and remained consistent during troubled times while the Democrats have run from one side of the ship to the other yelling and screaming. The American public sense them as a problem and the Democrats are unable to reason with the public's senses. The people ain't buying what the Demos are selling and I don't think the people are sick enough of Bush to make significant changes this election.

It's no different than the Republicans currently selling fear as the only reason why we should vote for them.

Conservativism died when Bush took office. The funeral was held on 9-11. Runaway debt, expanding goverment, pushing the politics of fear in order to get votes, disasterous disaster relief:

George Tenet’s WMD “slam-dunk,” Vice President Cheney’s “we will be greeted as liberators,” Don Rumsfeld’s avidity to promulgate a minimalist military doctrine, together with the tidy theories of a group who call themselves “neo-conservative” (not one of whom, to my knowledge, has ever worn a military uniform), have thus far: de-stabilized the Middle East; alienated the world community from the United States; empowered North Korea, Iran, and Syria; unleashed sectarian carnage in Iraq among tribes who have been cutting each others’ throats for over a thousand years; cost the lives of 2,600 Americans, and the limbs, eyes, organs, spinal cords of another 15,000—with no end in sight. But not to worry: Democracy is on the march in the Middle East. Just ask Hamas. And the neocons—bright people, all—are now clamoring, “On to Tehran!”

Let's quit while we are behind - Christopher Buckley

[attaboy]

In case anyone missed it.

According to UN officials, the current food shortage partly reflects a conscious decision by the regime to promote the cultivation of opium rather than wheat.

The Taliban made sure to grow as much opium as possible at the expense of people going hungry so they'd have plenty of inventory. Then they cornered the market and jacked the price up. I guess it shoots holes in the argument that they were following the teachings of Mohammend when they banned cultivation of poppies.

And I guess it shoots holes in the argument that the USA screwed up the righteous efforts of the Taliban to eradicate the scourge of drug addiction.

The End.

[RandomChances]

I was just reading through bits of Wiki and came across this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_r...in_Afghanistan

heres some selections from the article, but it's worth reading

CURRENT STATE OF AFGHANISTAN, ACCORDING TO MAILALA JOYA, HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST:
Malalai Joya's speech NDP Federal Convention September 9, 2006 Québec<......>
The US government did remove the medieval-minded regime of Taliban and their Al Qaeda masters. But instead they brought back the "Northern Alliance" to power who are brothers-in-creed of the Taliban and as brutal and anti-democracy as Taliban and even worse.

In December 2003, as a representative to the grand assembly, I talked about the criminal "Northern Alliance" and the danger they would pose to Afghanistan. But today, even the UN accepts that Afghanistan is going to become a narco-state under their rule.

According to the United Nations it is a land that is facing health disaster worse than Tsunami. 700 children and 50-70 women die on daily basis owing to the lack of health services. Child and mother mortality rate is still very high as 1,600 to 1,900 women among each 100,000 die during childbirth. Life expectancy is below 45 years.

The US government keeps promising not to repeat its past mistake in supporting the fundamentalists. But agonizing truth is that US is committing the same mistake. She is generously supporting the fundamentalists more than ever. The US is relying on "Northern Alliance" who turned Afghanistan into a hell from 1992-1996 and still are a great threat to the stability and peace in my country.

US can work with pro-American fundamentalist, but oppose only anti-American fundamentalists. This is the reason that people make mockery of the "war on terror".

Heroin production is back on the increase alledgedly accounting for around 80-90% of the worlds production, although supposedly mainly for the European market. The northen alliance are either activly involved in the production or just collect a tax on it, while the Mullahs in Iran are generating huge ammounts of income in form of "transit tax" for its travel through iran.

Where's all this money going ? certianly not to help the poor people of those areas. Much of it will go in supplying terrorist organisations, so at least indirectly the US gov is supporting organiations that actualy arm and train the very terrorists they puport to be fighting.

[man with no head]

I read that the typical farmer makes $700 per year growing normal crops and up to $7,000 per year growing poppies. Now, what crop do you think he's going to want to grow? Doesn't matter much who is in charge. Perhaps if we didn't screw Iraq up we'd have more money and resources to subsidize pumpkins or some other crop so the Afghans will grow something else.

[RandomChances]

I bet if I had the title as something like "America fuck's up" or something like that I would of had a much better responce. Anyway are'nt the british looking afte the place now ?

[raycarey]

it's NATO's problem now.