Room for a View

Strange Ally in the War on Drugs
By Sean Duffy . Edited by Lorna Tychostup

Civilized people throughout the world are speaking out in horror—not only because our hearts break for the women and children in Afghanistan, but also because in Afghanistan, we see the world the terrorists would like to impose on the rest of us.
—Laura Bush

On November 17, 2001, Laura Bush made history by delivering the weekly radio address, normally given by the President. Her topic, the horrible mistreatment of women by the Taliban, was well deserving of the attention it received by the first lady.

Photo by Alan Pogue

But before our national tragedy of September 11, the Bush administration, in spite of the well-known treatment of Afghan women by the Taliban, approved of the regime’s opium cultivation ban. In recognition of its newfound ally in the War on Drugs, the Bush Administration, through Colin Powell in the State Department, authorized a $43 million-aid package on May 17, 2001.

This action signaled that the Bush administration saw illegal drug production as a greater problem than the systematic abuse and virtual enslavement of women; and that the Bush administration was willing, despite the Taliban’s brutal and duplicitous history, to trust the fundamentalist Islamic regime as a drug war ally.
Hillary Clinton also spoke out against the Taliban and its treatment of women. Celebrating International Women’s Day in March 1998 in a joint press conference with Madeleine Albright, the former first lady stated, “We must give voice to women in Afghanistan, where women are brutalized and silenced by the Taliban, where girls are barred from school, where thousands of women cannot go to work, leave home alone or get the health care they need and where those who don’t follow every rule of attire or conduct are punished with beatings, whippings, even death.” She also announced that her husband’s administration was giving a $10 million-aid package to foreign governments and international organizations to help fight violence against women. In addition, Hillary Clinton also looked to fight an insidious form of international crime—the trafficking of women. By May of 2001, however, the Bush administration had decided to put the cause of women in Afghanistan secondary to opium farming.

Poppies for Freedom

To counter the Soviet invasion of the land-locked nation, the Reagan Administration, particularly under the guidance of CIA director William Casey, pumped $3.2 billion in covert funds from 1980 to 1988 according to journalists Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. John Pike from the Federation of American Scientists noted that “even after the Soviet defeat, CIA dollars continued to pour in. Funding estimates for 1991 ranged from $180 million to $300 million.”

The prime recipients of this aid, labeled “Freedom Fighters” by President Reagan, were also known as the mujahideen. The CIA, through their erstwhile ally Pakistan’s foreign intelligence branch, the Inter Service Intelligence (ISI), gave the majority of their funds to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan guerilla warlord who led the US proxy forces against the Soviet Union. Alfred McCoy, in his well-documented work The Politics of Heroin, details the nefarious nature of Hekmatyar, an Islamic fundamentalist who gladly sent his minions to disfigure the faces of women students who did not wear veils. McCoy notes that “not only did he command the largest guerilla army, but Hekmatyar would use it—with the full support of ISI and the tacit tolerance of the CIA—to become Afghanistan’s leading drug lord.”

Some drug experts saw a crisis brewing. Former members of the Carter White House Strategy Council on Drug Abuse, Joyce H. Lowinson and David F. Musto, noted their concerns in an op-ed piece in the New York Times on May 22, 1980. “We worry about the growing of opium poppies in Afghanistan and Pakistan by rebel tribesmen. Are we erring in befriending these tribes as we did in Laos when Air America (chartered by the CIA) helped transport crude opium from certain tribal areas.” (Though Afghani farmers have cultivated opium for centuries, they did not reach the status of global producer until the 1980s.)

In a September 7, 1981, article, New York Times reporter Barbara Crossette noted that the Reagan administration was looking to stop the burgeoning heroin traffic out of Pakistan, at least. Administration officials pointed out that Pakistan, under President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, cooperated on anti-narcotics programs with the United States. Jon D. Holstine, assistant administrator in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), detailed integrated approaches for opium eradication including crop substitution. One potential crop mentioned was another global killer: tobacco.

By 1985, as covert funding from the US flowed into Afghanistan through Pakistan, First Lady Nancy Reagan gave a joint press conference with Shafiq Zia-ul-Haq, wife of the president of Pakistan. As reported by the Washington Post, in April 1985, the Pakistani first lady noted government’s role in regulating opium: “For 200 years in Pakistan, 333 government-supported centers sold opium freely. For most of those years, the opium users were functioning members of society.” By 1979, however, her husband, “in accordance to Islamic principles,” outlawed opium cultivation. Claiming that the heroin addicts numbered around 150,000 out of a population of 90 million, Zia also pointed out that “Westerners set up laboratories to process the [predominantly Afghan] opium into heroin, which is far more lethal than opium. Since 1981 the virus of the addiction spread among our young people.” 1981 was also the same year that the US greatly increased funds for covert operations into Afghanistan via the ISI. By 2000, Pakistan’s heroin problem, previously manageable, had reached epidemic proportions with over 5 million addicts, according to Pakistan journalist Ahmed Rashid.

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth

With the infusion of money, guns, and drugs, the Afghan-Pakistan border region became one of the most dangerous areas in the world. Ahmed Rashid noted that “ever since 1980, all the mujahideen warlords had used drug money to help fund their military campaign and line their own pockets.” Pakistan, deprived of US funding by the Clinton administration due to its nuclear weapons program, clandestinely sought to fund covert operations through heroin trafficking. Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif, in a 1994 Washington Post interview, claimed that in 1991 army chief of staff, Aslam Beg, and head of ISI, Asad Durrani, looked to raise money covertly through heroin sales. Sharif refused permission. He subsequently denied his statements although Ahmed Rashid, in his book Taliban, points to evidence showing that “the National Logistics Cell, an army-run trucking company, was frequently used by well-connected dealers to transport heroin back to Karachi for export.”

Out of the chaos of civil war, unrestrained warlords, and Pashtun-dominated madrassas near the Afghan border in Pakistan, arose the Taliban. With their rapid military victories, the relatively youthful movement managed to consolidate the great majority of Afghan opium provinces, in particular the Helmand province. The Taliban, then, brought opium cultivation to levels not seen since the heyday of the Golden Triangle in the 1960s and 70s. DEA estimates of Afghan opium production show a metric tonnage increase from 2,099 in 1996 (the year the Taliban captured Kabul) to 3,656 in 2000. While the Taliban used their version of Islamic principles to practice gender apartheid, their love for drug money spoke louder than the Koran.

How much Afghan opium reaches US shores has been a topic of confusion for government officials. The Washington Post, in 1983, noted that the DEA claimed that 52 percent of US heroin came from the so-called Golden Crescent region (Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan). Later that same year, the US-Pakistan Working Group on Narcotics stated that the correct figure was 27 percent. In 2000, Afghan farmers supplied 70 percent of the world’s opium, according to the DEA. By December 2001, DEA head Asa Hutchinson declared that only 4 percent of US heroin came from Afghanistan. Most Afghan heroin travels through Iran, Pakistan, and the Central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan winding up in Europe, according to the DEA. The demise of Communism has led to new criminal capitalist opportunities for long-established Eastern European mafiosi. The Czech news agency, CTK, reported last October that Albanian drug rings were selling Afghan opium. Reporting for the Moscow newspaper, Rossiyskiye Vesti, Igor Ustyakin noted that Russian criminal organizations ran drugs across Europe and even the US. Ustyakin adds that “up to 80 percent of the narcotics come to Russia from Afghanistan.” Afghani crops empower illicit organizations far beyond its borders.

Opium & Power

The relationship between opium and power in Afghanistan, often a nebulous connection, may be best summed up in a Zen-like paradox: No one controls opium cultivation in Afghanistan. He who controls the opium in Afghanistan controls the country. Former King Zahir Shah, extremist Hezb-i-Islami guerilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Mullah Mohammed Omar have all been in control of Afghanistan, as well as directly or indirectly profiting from the opium trade. Zahir Shah, while never directly implicated in drugs, had close associates who were drug traffickers. US News & World Report, on October 15, 2001, had an interview with former deputy DEA administrator, Terrence Burke, who claimed that “people around the King were involved,” such as key royal aid Mohammed Rahim Panshiri. The King’s plane was used for transporting drugs out of the country. As reported by the Union Leader (11/ 20/2001), Zahir Shah, in a November meeting with three Republican members of the House, part of Speaker Haskert’s Drug Task Force, was noncommittal when asked if opium should be outlawed in a post-Taliban Afghanistan. When the Representatives repeatedly asked his opinion on opium, the former King answered, “I smoke cigars.” Rep. John Shadegg (Arizona) “interpreted this as meaning the king did not want to alienate tribesmen whose only income is from opium,” perhaps missing the King’s point entirely.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar clearly was involved in heroin trafficking. Partially by pounding Kabul with rockets in 1993, Hekmatyar became Afghan Prime Minister that same year; however, his days as a major power broker were numbered. The drug lord, funded by both Pakistan and heroin, became to be seen as a “loser” by his Pakistan backers who looked for more viable Pashtun forces, according to Rashid.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, with the major opium provinces under Taliban control (other than the Badakhshan province held by the Northern Alliance) streamlined opium cultivation and heroin trafficking in Afghanistan, collecting a tax or zakat (a traditional surcharge on agricultural products). William Bach, State Department official in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, detailed, in an October 2001 Congressional hearing, the extent of Taliban involvement in opium: “We have ample evidence that the Taliban has condoned and profited from the drug trade. According to UN estimates for 1999, the value of the Afghan opium crop at the farm gate was $265 million, which represents at least $40 million in tax revenue for the Taliban.”

The Taliban did make some efforts to convince the world that it was attempting to curb drug production and use, particularly hashish. The Daily Telegraph in 1997 interviewed Taliban drug control officer Abdul Rashid who admitted, “We cannot push the people to grow wheat. There would be an uprising against the Taliban if we forced them to stop poppy cultivation.” In May 24, 2001, New York Times reporter Barry Bearak interviewed Abdul Hamid Akhundzada, in charge of the Taliban poppy eradication program. “We use a soft approach. When there were violations, we plowed the fields.”

“The wisdom of the Holy Koran guided Mullah Omar,” wrote Bearak, “The betting is that the ban will hold up.” After the demise of the Taliban, the Daily Telegraph reported the true story behind the Taliban’s anti-opium campaign. Mir Najibullah Shams, member of the High Commission for Drug Control, stated that “it was all just one great big game.” Another commission member, Mohammed Aref, pointed out that the Taliban drug raids were often a sham: “The villagers were warned in advance when they were coming.” Reporter Marcus Warren added, “The commission, however, was a front for a state funded by the drugs trade. The High Commission’s activity was controlled by Mullah Abdul Hamid Akhundzada.” As the Akhundzada family had been drug lords in the Helmand Province, Abdul Hamid’s role, if related, should not have been a surprise.

American Aid: A Shell Game

Similar to the Taliban’s war on drugs, American aid to Afghanistan was often a shell game. The Afghans learned to play this game well. According to author Michael Keating who researched Afghan aid programs, “In the late 1980s when aid funds seemed abundant, dozens of Afghan NGOs came into being under the aegis of the resistance parties. Although some were staffed by Afghan technocrats with the noblest motives, many seemed to exist to soak up funds rather than to deliver any verifiable service.” Griffin adds that aid “turned into an industry on par with heroin and which, in the view of some critics, essentially assisted its transformation into the world’s largest opium producers by funding repairs of its myriad irrigation systems.”
Most recently, the Taliban enacted an (apparently) highly successful opium cultivation ban in hope of international recognition and US aid. DEA head of foreign intelligence Steven Casteel, in a Crossette New York Times interview (2/11/2001), was cautious over the opium ban. “I am more interested almost not in what is happening but why. These organizations are getting more sophisticated. They make international business decisions.” He surmised, “This could be simply a price issue.” Three months later in another Times interview, Casteel stated that he believed “that the ban has taken effect,” except in Northern Afghanistan, under the control of the Northern Alliance.
Casteel’s comments came five days after the return of a two-man DEA/State inspection team in May 2001. On May 17, 2001, and one week after Leonard Rogers, Deputy Assistant Administrator from the State Department admitted that the US had no method of monitoring US aid in Afghanistan, Colin Powell, authorized a $43 million-aid package for Afghanistan. Claiming, “We will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to the Afghans,” Powell set aside $10 million of the aid package for “other livelihood and food security programs.” He also pointed out that “The United States was by far the largest provider of humanitarian assistance for Afghanistan.”

It would be futile to assign a malevolent purpose behind the Bush administration engaging the Taliban as a partner in the War on Drugs. Nevertheless, supplying $10 million, albeit indirectly, to help support the supposed anti-narcotics goals of a Taliban regime which clearly (in retrospect) was pulling the wool over our eyes, now seems questionable in design though not motive. On May 22, 2001, Robert Scheer, from the Los Angeles Times, noted “The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own drug war zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure.”
As USA Today reported on October 16, 2001, the War on Terrorism, in Afghanistan, will include a second front, the War on Drugs. An anonymous US official talking about spraying opium fields to stop poppy growth claimed, “It’s a logical step.” Steven Casteel, interviewed by CBS reporter David Kohn in December, stated that American jets were bombing stashed Afghan opium surpluses. “Are you prepared to go back every year and bomb the fields in Afghanistan?” Casteel posed rhetorically. “Bombing is a very narrow solution, you have to have a long-range plan.”

The American long-range plan has included a military campaign on drugs that has lasted for decades. By enlisting the Taliban in the anti-narcotics crusade, the Bush administration joined forces with an ally that for all practical purposes enslaved half of its population. The question must be asked: In the future will we embrace regimes that practice female slavery as acceptable allies in the War on Drugs?