The Taliban Is a Drug Cartel and Should Be Attacked as Such
By Sam Dealey, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
The latest report on Afghanistan's opium economy from the U.N.'s drug tsar, Antonio Maria Costa, only confirms what sensible people foretold six years ago: that the Wars on Drugs and Terror are inexorably linked.
Briefly, here's the latest: Overall, opium cultivation is down significantly across Afghanistan. Ninety-eight percent of the country's opium last year was sourced to seven provinces in the south and southwest where Taliban control is strongest. The Taliban raked in as much as $300 million from the opium trade last year, but supply vastly exceeds demand and prices are falling. As such, there's anecdotal evidence that, just as it did in 2001, the Taliban is purposely curtailing opium cultivation to drive up prices on its significant stockpiles.
As I've written before, the West's failure to aggressively battle Afghanistan's drug trade has enriched the Taliban, institutionalized corruption, impeded government control, and cemented the trafficking routes that also carry weapons and fighters. Handing out wheat seeds and fatwas only goes so far, and eradicating farmers' plots is only a token gesture that hits too far down the food chain. With the opium trade now more concentrated in the hands of those who matter, the time for an assertive interdiction campaign is long overdue.
As Costa remarked, "Opium production and prices can both be kept down by destroying high-value targets like drug markets, heroin labs, and trafficking convoys." Interdiction like that requires muscle, and the handful of DEA agents and their mentored Afghan units can't do it alone. NATO forces—and particularly the Pentagon—should drop their bureaucratic objections and get involved. Like it or not, the Taliban is a drug cartel, and to ignore that means fighting only half a war.
Tags: Afghanistan | drugs | terrorism | Taliban | War in Afghanistan (2001-)
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Reader Comments
war on terror in pakistan
if NATO and US take afghanistan war and affghanistan situation seriously and help the afghan people there will be no problem but all the drugs dealers are betwenn afghanistan and pakistan also the terror centers are in pakistan.pakistan get so much help from US but they are liers they cooperate with terrorists organization on the other side they want to be part of war on terror.but the terro is mostly in their own country.pakistan never want a peacfull afghanistan.the afghan peole know that the US did not do enough to fight the terro and drugs in their country .it depends to US and NATO if they really want .i think afghan people support u.so.there is much to do
Re: Jake & Joe's Comments
It would be an interesting experiment to legalize drugs for one year and watch all the dirty banks go under due to the fact that all those billions in laundered money isn't flowing through the financial system each day.
An interesting study was done for the World Bank by Peter Reuter in which he actually argues that it might be best just to have a couple countries remain responsible for being essentially narco-states because if you try to stop it there, it will just ruin another state (like trying to plug holes in the dam). Read "Columbia" and "Afghanistan" in there.
What's more interesting in that is that he arrives at this conclusion after basically doing an assessment that shows that the problem is prohibition that creates underground criminal transnational operations. He address the idea of legalization in one or two paragraphs of the whole report, but dismisses the idea not because it wouldn't be a great idea (which he implies it would be) but because it would violate unspecified "treaties".
So the solution isn't to alter these "treaties" to allow nations to legalize drugs at their own discretion, but to rather keep states like Columbia and Afghanistan in the position they're in now as the source of black market trafficking and catalyst for growth of whole criminal underworlds.
It's truly fascinating how some people think.
I agree with Joe Becker of FL above.
Only history-illiterate simpletons favor prohibition. This applies to drugs, guns, tinted windows, gambling, prostitution, or trade in any other noncoercive product or activity between consenting adults. To make the previously stated kinds of business illegal is simply to create a criminal market for those goods or services.
Criminal markets defend their territory with violence, and resolve trade conflicts and disputes with violence. Moreover, they then can profit enough to perpetrate other crimes, since they've already found ways to get around the law. Prohibition empowers criminals. But don't take my word for it: take the word of police officers who understand basic economics.
Google: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)
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