What's America's Real Role in the Afghan Heroin Trade?

Reese Erlich- AlterNet

May 1, 2002

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Shanawaz says Afghanistan has no effective central government, police, or army. Local warlords rule as they did in the 1990s. And that’s why opium poppies are back in bloom.

Farmers have grown poppies for centuries in Afghanistan. The northern climate is perfectly suited for poppy production, Afghan farmers note with a hint of local pride. Drug dealers in Mexico and Colombia grow poppies but produce inferior quality, the Afghans say. Poppy growing flourishes in Afghanistan because it’s cheap to raise and fabulously profitable to sell.

By the late 1990s Afghanistan supplied 75 percent of the world’s heroin. The low-maintenance crop had become a major foreign-exchange earner for the country. The Taliban caved in to tremendous international pressure and prohibited the crop in 1999. Within two years, the poppy crop had been reduced by 95 percent, according to an assessment by the U.N. office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNDCP). In May 2001, the Bush Administration even promised the Taliban $43 million in aid as a reward for their anti-drug efforts.

When the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan last October, the Taliban crumbled, and farmers started planting poppies once again. Heroin smuggling shot up. "The people need to earn money," says Shanawaz matter-of-factly.

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