Drugs in Afghanistan

Gretchen Peters's op-ed in the NYT discusses drugs in Afghanistan and how they support the Taliban through the revenue generated.
Se says that drug traffickers in Afghanistan hire the Taliban to protect their drugs shipments and that traffickers also pay corrupt officials in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to look the other way.
But although he mentions that corrupt officials in the government or police forces also benefit from the drugs trade, he seems not to be aware that those officials are therefore the main reason why NATO has not acted against drugs in any significant way and that in fact the drugs trade has increased significantly under the occupation is that the very officials that NATO put in power are benefiting hugely from the drugs trade. In a way, NATO has an incentive to let the drugs trade flourish as it strengthens its own allies in government. There is nothing new in this policy, it has been going on for several decades in US foreign policy (in Central America and Asia in particular).

The Taliban’s opium profits are estimated to be about $400 million a year; but as Peters observes, "Many experts believe that corrupt officials on both sides of the [Afghanistan-Pakistan] border earn even more off the drug trade than the Taliban do." This conforms to some tentative assessment from the United Nations' "Opium Survey".

In another article, Gretchen Peters argues that the Afghan Taliban should be seen less as terrorists than as mafia-style businessmen who run an economic "empire" worth almost half a billion dollars.

Here is a 2007 article written by Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan (2002-2004). He states that "The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government -- the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect. When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons -- especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance -- to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers."

He makes the important point that "Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time", stating: "[I] watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan [and into Uzbekistan], en route to Europe. I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.Yet I could not persuade my country to do anything about it."

Since the NATO/ISAF occupation, opium cultivation has increased significantly in Afghanistan, mostly due to the fact that US/NATO allies in government and warlords benefit so much from drugs, so they are left alone and the US/NATO do not take serious steps to end the drugs trade. It of course benefits NATO to have strong allies in power, hence the toleration for the drugs trade.