Article: Drug Trade Is Primary Income Source for Taliban, DEA Says

03 October 2001

Article: Drug Trade Is Primary Income Source for Taliban, DEA Says

No direct links found between bin Laden and drugs

By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban exerts significant control over the cultivation and distribution of the nation's opium poppy crop and the illicit trade in heroin derived from the plant, said Drug Enforcement Administration head Asa Hutchinson as he testified October 3 before a congressional committee on criminal justice and drug policy.

U.S. State Department intelligence information on drug trafficking in the region indicates that the Taliban has collected at least $40 million through a tax it imposes on the opium poppy crop, William Bach from the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs told the committee. Congressmen Mark Souder and Elijah E. Cummings, both committee members, placed the figure at $50 million.

The DEA and State officials said they had no evidence clearly linking drug profits and suspected terrorist leader Usama bin Laden or his al Qaeda terrorist network. "While we do not have clear evidence directly linking drug traffickers and terrorists in Afghanistan, Taliban responsibility is obvious, particularly given its de facto control over 90 percent of the country," said Bach.

DEA Administrator Hutchinson also expressed certainty about the link between drugs and terror in Afghanistan. "The very sanctuary enjoyed by bin Laden is based on the existence of the Taliban's support for the drug trade. This connection defines the deadly, symbiotic relationship between the illicit drug trade and international terrorism," he said.

Connections between drug traffickers and terrorist movements have drawn increasing attention from the international law enforcement community in recent years. Bach said the State Department's concern about the trend has "heightened exponentially" in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the United States. Bin Laden and the al Qaeda network are considered the primary suspects in the hijackings of four U.S. commercial airliners and their subsequent crashes in New York City, Washington and rural Pennsylvania.

"The degree to which profits from the drug trade are directed to finance terrorist activities, as well as the extent to which both types of organizations rely upon the same money laundering and smuggling facilitators or systems, is of paramount concern to the DEA," Hutchinson said in a prepared statement.

"We see in these [drug trafficking] groups today a merger of international organized crime and terror," Hutchinson said. "While DEA does not specifically target terrorists per se, we can and will target and track down drug traffickers involved in terrorist acts, wherever in the world we can find them."

Subcommittee Chairman Mark Souder described the partnerships between drug traffickers and terrorists as "dark synergies." International intelligence information suggests that such relationships currently exist between insurgent groups and drug traffickers in Colombia, Peru and Burma, he said.

Hutchinson presented the committee with a receipt which he said demonstrated the institutionalized nature of the taxation imposed by the Taliban on the opium poppy crop. The DEA administrator also presented data which showed steady increases in Afghanistan's annual opium production and the number of hectares planted in opium poppies through the 1990s.

In 2000, however, the Taliban banned opium poppy cultivation. The United Nations Drug Control Program declared the effort successful, and the ban was extended into 2001. Hutchinson questioned whether the Taliban is committed to the cause of reducing drug trafficking in this action.

If poppy cultivation has declined, then the availability of heroin in Southwest Asia would also be expected to decrease, but Hutchinson said that has not happened. He suggested that the Taliban has stored previous years' production of opium for future sale and is now attempting to drive up the regional price of opium through control of the supply.

Bach reported significant international cooperation to crack down on Afghanistan's opium production through a diplomatic process he described as "six-plus-two," involving the United States, Russia and the six nations bordering Afghanistan -- Iran, Pakistan, China, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Bach said all these nations suffer adverse impacts and increasing addiction among their own populations as a result of the Afghan drug trade. He gave Iran credit for its enforcement actions against the transit of drugs across its territory -- actions that have yielded significant drug seizures.