Afghanistan: Opium profits, the Taliban and al Qaeda

By Jessica Thompson especially for Justice and Drugs

Kathy Gannon provided an insightful review of Gretchen Peters’new book “Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda” for the Wall Street Journal Friday. In her book, Peters’ promotes a crack down on the Afghan opium trade to undermine the Taliban and al Qaeda’s major source of funding as an essential feature of the “war on terror.”

However, Peters was not the first to discover the $ 2.8 billion opium trade is funding the Taliban and al Qaeda. Phil Smith of DRCNet/StoptheDrug War.com reported that after former Clinton drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey visited Afghanistan in 2005 he said "Is there a relationship between $2 billion in this impoverished 14th-century desperate land, and the appearance of brand-new guns and shiny camping gear? Of course there is." Read more from journalist Phil Smith’s on-the-ground reporting of the drug war here.

Although Peters is correct that the opium trade funds the enemies of the U.S., Gannon raises a critical question regarding the identity of the beneficiaries from the opium trade. “Is it the Taliban and al Qaeda or members of Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government?” Gannon says both. She explains that after removing the Taliban in late 2001, the U.S. and its allies filled the Afghan government with the kingpins and drug lords who had fought against the Soviets that had previously been replaced by the Taliban in 1996.

Not only did Peters miss the key issue by over-emphasizing funding of the Taliban and al Qaeda, she fails to seriously consider the solution to funding of these groups from the illegal drug trade. With no genuine consideration of the legalization and consequent regulation of the opium trade, Peters introduces, discusses and dismisses the idea within a single paragraph in her 238-page book.

Today the U.S. government announced it is ceasing the failed opium eradication policy it has pursued for eight years. The full scope of the policy is unstated. Yet, it is hard to imagine that this is not a prelude to a regularization, normalization and control of the market in opium to assure that farmers get their income, but profits don’t go to criminals.

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