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THE POPPY PARADOX: U.S. War In Afghanistan Boosts Terror Funds

Editor's Note: The United States will have to choose between two conflicting policies in Central Asia, writes PNS contributor Peter Dale Scott: pursuing terrorists, or accommodating to a drug-driven status quo. Scott is an author and former Canadian diplomat. His Web page on 9/11 and Afghanistan can be found at http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/q.html.

Thursday, August 1, 2002
By Peter Dale Scott
Pacific News Service

The United States, while endorsing a drug-financed status quo, is not happy about making such payments. On the contrary, some U.S. officers suspect that Hazrat Ali, whose troops took part in the attack last winter against al Qaeda in the Tora Bora caves, secretly warned Osama bin Laden of U.S. plans to capture him, and perhaps even allowed troops to escort al Qaeda fighters into Pakistan. U.S. actions probably reflect its complex relations with Pakistan, which regards both Gul Agha and Hazrat Ali as allies. For 20 years, the complex of heroin-terror networks in Central Asia has been fostered by Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI.

PNS
It's a bitter irony: The largely successful U.S. campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan is resulting in an increase of funds for terrorists around the globe.

It is true, as President Bush has insisted, that global terrorism is financed by the flow of illicit drugs. Yet by installing and rewarding a coalition of drug-financed warlords in Kabul, the United States has itself helped restore the flow of Afghan heroin to terrorist groups, from the Balkans and Chechnya to Tajikistan, Pakistan and Kashmir.

Thanks to the U.S. intervention, Afghanistan will again supply up to 70 percent of the world's heroin this year, 90 percent of the heroin reaching Europe and even a part of the heroin reaching the United States.

The Taliban successfully reduced opium production by over 90 percent, even if only to maintain prices by restricting supply. As soon as they were driven out, farmers -- often at the instigation of local warlords -- began replanting their fields with opium. It is estimated that the 2002 crop will be about 85 percent of the record-breaking 4,500 metric tons harvested in 1999.
(More: The Black World Today News Source)
2002 © Pacific News Service.

Dan