DRUGS 37
4-2ca Article three
The Spoils of War: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade
by Michel Chossudovsky
4-2cb Global Research, May 2005
Since the US led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the Golden Crescent opium trade has soared.
According to the US media, this lucrative contraband is protected by Osama, the Taliban, not to mention,
of course, the regional warlords, in defiance of the “international community”.
The heroin business is said to be “filling the coffers of the Taliban”. In the words of the US State Department:
“Opium is a source of literally billions of dollars to extremist and criminal groups… [C]utting down the
opium supply is central to establishing a secure and stable democracy, as well as winning the global
war on terrorism,” (Statement of Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles. Congressional Hearing,
1 April 2004)
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium production in Afghanistan
in 2003 is estimated at 3,600 tons, with an estimated area under cultivation of the order of 80,000 hectares.
(UNODC at http://www.unodc.org/unodc/index.html ). An even larger bumper harvest is predicted for 2004.
The State Department suggests that up to 120 000 hectares were under cultivation in 2004. (Congressional
Hearing, op cit):
”We could be on a path for a significant surge. Some observers indicate perhaps as much as 50 percent
to 100 percent growth in the 2004 crop over the already troubling figures from last year.”(Ibid)
4-2cc “Operation Containment“
In response to the post-Taliban surge in opium production, the Bush administration has boosted its counter
terrorism activities, while allocating substantial amounts of public money to the Drug Enforcement
Administration’s West Asia initiative, dubbed “Operation Containment.”
The various reports and official statements are, of course, blended in with the usual “balanced” self critique
that “the international community is not doing enough”, and that what we need is “transparency”.
The headlines are “Drugs, warlords and insecurity overshadow Afghanistan’s path to democracy”. In chorus,
the US media is accusing the defunct “hard-line Islamic regime”, without even acknowledging that the Taliban
–in collaboration with the United Nations– had imposed a successful ban on poppy cultivation in 2000.
Opium production declined by more than 90 per cent in 2001. In fact the surge in opium cultivation production
coincided with the onslaught of the US-led military operation and the downfall of the Taliban regime. From
October through December 2001, farmers started to replant poppy on an extensive basis.
The success of Afghanistan’s 2000 drug eradication program under the Taliban had been acknowledged at
the October 2001 session of the UN General Assembly (which took place barely a few days after the
beginning of the 2001 bombing raids). No other UNODC member country was able to implement a
comparable program:
“Turning first to drug control, I had expected to concentrate my remarks on the implications of the Taliban’s
ban on opium poppy cultivation in areas under their control… We now have the results of our annual ground
survey of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. This year’s production [2001] is around 185 tons. This is down
from the 3300 tons last year [2000], a decrease of over 94 per cent. Compared to the record harvest of
4700 tons two years ago, the decrease is well over 97 per cent.
Any decrease in illicit cultivation is welcomed, especially in cases like this when no displacement, locally
or in other countries, took place to weaken the achievement” (Remarks on behalf of UNODC Executive
Director at the UN General Assembly, Oct 2001, http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/speech_2001-10-
12_1.html )
4-2cd United Nations’ Coverup
In the wake of the US invasion, shift in rhetoric. UNODC is now acting as if the 2000 opium ban had
never happened:
“the battle against narcotics cultivation has been fought and won in other countries and it [is] possible
to do so here [in Afghanistan], with strong, democratic governance, international assistance and improved
security and integrity.” ( Statement of the UNODC Representative in Afghanistan at the :February 2004
International Counter Narcotics Conference, http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afg/afg_intl_counter_narcotics_
conf_2004.pdf , p. 5).
In fact, both Washington and the UNODC now claim that the objective of the Taliban in 2000 was not really
“drug eradication” but a devious scheme to trigger “an artificial shortfall in supply”, which would drive up
World prices of heroin.
Ironically, this twisted logic, which now forms part of a new “UN consensus”, is refuted by a report of the
UNODC office in Pakistan, which confirmed, at the time, that there was no evidence of stockpiling by the
Taliban. (Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Utah. 5 October 2003)
Washington’s Hidden Agenda: Restore the Drug Trade
In the wake of the 2001 US bombing of Afghanistan, the British government of Tony Blair was entrusted
by the G-8 Group of leading industrial nations to carry out a drug eradication program, which would, in
theory, allow Afghan farmers to switch out of poppy cultivation into alternative crops. The British were
working out of Kabul in close liaison with the US DEA’s “Operation Containment”.
The UK sponsored crop eradication program is an obvious smokescreen. Since October 2001, opium
poppy cultivation has skyrocketed. The presence of occupation forces in Afghanistan did not result in
the eradication of poppy cultivation. Quite the opposite.
The Taliban prohibition had indeed caused “the beginning of a heroin shortage in Europe by the end of
2001?, as acknowledged by the UNODC.
Heroin is a multibillion dollar business supported by powerful interests, which requires a steady and
secure commodity flow. One of the “hidden” objectives of the war was precisely to restore the CIA
sponsored drug trade to its historical levels and exert direct control over the drug routes.
Immediately following the October 2001 invasion, opium markets were restored. Opium prices spiraled.
By early 2002, the opium price (in dollars/kg) was almost 10 times higher than in 2000.
In 2001, under the Taliban opiate production stood at 185 tons, increasing to 3400 tons in 2002 under
the US sponsored puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai.
While highlighting Karzai’s patriotic struggle against the Taliban, the media fails to mention that Karzai
collaborated with the Taliban. He had also been on the payroll of a major US oil company, UNOCAL.
In fact, since the mid-1990s, Hamid Karzai had acted as a consultant and lobbyist for UNOCAL in
negotiations with the Taliban. According to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan:
“Karzai has been a Central Intelligence Agency covert operator since the 1980s. He collaborated with
the CIA in funneling U.S. aid to the Taliban as of 1994 when the Americans had secretly and through the
Pakistanis [specifically the ISI] supported the Taliban’s assumption of power.” (quoted in Karen Talbot,
U.S. Energy Giant Unocal Appoints Interim Government in Kabul, Global Outlook, No. 1, Spring 2002.
p. 70. See also BBC Monitoring Service, 15 December 2001)
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