The Taliban and their heroin finances

The heroin trade in Afghanistan will continue to flourish under the new Taliban rulers despite public statements promising to ban poppy cultivation, US intelligence sources said. With the guarantee of such a huge annual income from growing opium , the insurgent leaders- turned-governors will find it impractical to force farmers to switch to alternative crops, the sources said. Last month, Zabihullah Mujahid, Taliban spokesman, declared at a press conference in Kabul that the new rulers would not allow Afghanistan to be turned into a fully-fledged narco state. We are assuring our countrymen and women and the international community we will not have any narcotics produced,” he said. “From now on, nobody is going to get involved [in the heroin trade], nobody can be involved in drug smuggling,” he said. However, Afghanistan is the biggest opium producer in the world. Even if a ban is imposed, the US intelligence sources said , it was unlikely to last long. “There are a lot of poppy farmers involved,” they said. US counter-narcotics units found the same problem. They tried to persuade farmers to switch to wheat and cereal crops and spent nearly $9 billion over 15 years in the process. But, like similar attempts by Britain’s MI6, they failed to make any significant impact on opium poppy cultivation. Key players in the opium business in Afghanistan included regional governors, Taliban commanders and war lords who had built up networks over two decades and they were not going to give up the lucrative trade, the intelligence sources said. The money paid to the farmers was always enough to allow them to survive the winter with their families while the next season of poppy crops matured. Banning cultivation would hit the poorest families and generate anger against the Taliban. The same dilemma was faced by the Taliban in 2000. “The Taliban stopped poppy cultivation in 2000 after they came to power in 1996 [claiming it was contrary to the Islamic faith] but it was only for a short time and they soon brought it back and relied on the income [when they were overthrown in 2001),” the sources said. Throughout the war with the US-led coalition, the opium trade provided the Taliban with income for weapons and the building of increasingly sophisticated improvised explosive devices, as well as paying the wages of the 70,000 fighters, some of them foreigners. With international aid scrapped and bank assets frozen, Taliban finances would be even more reduced if they brought the drug trade to a halt. An Afghanistan opium survey carried out last year by the United Nations office on drugs and crime revealed that poppy cultivation had risen by 37 per cent in 12 months. Twenty-two out of 34 provinces were involved in poppy cultivation last year, generating 6,300 tons of opium at a “farm-gate” value of $350 million, the UN survey found. The record opium production was set in 2017 with 9,900 tons valued at around $1.4 billion. The Taliban were the main beneficiaries of the trade, including charging smugglers a ten per cent tax for shipments bound for Europe, Canada, Africa, Russia and throughout Asia. It’s estimated the Taliban netted an annual $400 million from all aspects of the drug business. The intelligence sources said that, in addition to income from the drugs trade, the Taliban would continue to boost their finances with border charges and their longstanding roadside taxation programme, involving the collection of payments from drivers of all goods vehicles in exchange for safe passage, a tradition which raised millions of dollars for the insurgents during the war. One scam no longer available for the Taliban is the taxing system they imposed on American and coalition convoys of tankers driven by Afghan contractors which criss-crossed Afghanistan to provide diesel for military units spread throughout the country during the 20-year war. More often than not the tankers would arrive at their destination half full, fuel having been siphoned off and resold on the black market. At the height of the war when there were 150,000 troops in Afghanistan, it was estimated the Taliban earned up to $100 million a year in tanker taxes.