Most Afghan Opium Grown In Rebel-Controlled Areas
By BARRY MEIER
October 5, 2001
New data collected by the United Nations indicates that most opium grown in Afghanistan this year was in areas controlled by the Northern Alliance, a rebel group now being courted by the United States and its Western allies as a means to destabilizing and even toppling the ruling Taliban.
The United Nations study confirmed earlier findings by United Nations officials and United States narcotics experts that opium harvests in areas controlled by the Taliban -- said by the United Nations to be about 90 percent of Afghanistan -- have plummeted after a recent Taliban ban on the growing of opium poppies. Opium is used to produce heroin and other narcotics.
The new data, which United Nations officials expect to issue shortly, is coming to light as government officials in the United States and Europe have emphasized the role of the Taliban in purveying Afghan opium and heroin.
Yesterday, for example, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, in a paper that fixed responsibility for last month's terrorist attacks on the network headed by Osama bin Laden, noted that both Mr. bin Laden and the Taliban ''jointly exploited the drugs trade.''
United Nations narcotics experts have estimated that the Taliban have earned $10 million to $30 million a year from taxes levied on opium growers, while United States government officials more recently gave higher estimates of $40 million to $50 million. The extent of Northern Alliance earnings from opium cultivation is not clear, the United Nations experts said.
''There are no white hats over there,'' said an American official familiar with the Afghan heroin trade, commenting on the broad involvement in narcotics trafficking in the region as a whole. ''If the U.S. tries to find someone whose hands are completely free on this they are going to have to go thousands of miles.''
The new data was assembled by the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna.
In a telephone interview yesterday, Pino Arlacchi, the office's director, said that production of opium poppies in Afghanistan, a country that until recently had accounted for 71 percent of the world's supply, had plummeted by 91 percent this year.
Mr. Arlacchi said areas controlled by the Taliban accounted for virtually all those changes. By contrast, he said that opium production in those areas controlled by the Northern Alliance had continued largely unchanged.
The Northern Alliance controls a small part of northeastern Afghanistan along the border with Tajikistan, which is a major corridor for trafficking drugs that eventually end up in Western Europe.
That production, however, still represents a small fraction of previous Afghan levels.
Two American officials said government information confirmed the drastic cuts in opium growing in Taliban-controlled areas. But in separate interviews, they cautioned that the Taliban had large stockpiles of opium and heroin from record harvests in the years before the ban on cultivation.
''I don't believe that the trade in opium has dropped over there,'' said one of the officials. ''While the Taliban eliminated the plants, we saw no indication that they eliminated the market.''
About 10 percent of Afghan heroin makes its way to this country. The remainder is sold in Europe, Russia and the former Soviet republics.
For its part, Britain has been extremely hard hit and Mr. Blair, in a speech this week, accused the Taliban of controlling the ''biggest drugs hoards'' in the world.
Asked to comment yesterday on the United Nations data, a spokesman for Mr. Blair's office estimated that 90 percent of the heroin sold on British streets came from Afghanistan. ''We are determined to stem the flow of these drugs into the U.K., working with our international partners to stamp this out,'' the spokesman said.
Mr. Arlacchi said that Ahmed Shah Massoud, the former leader of the Northern Alliance, had discussed his interest in curbing the opium trade. But Mr. Massoud, who was assassinated last month by men believed to be linked to Mr. bid Laden's network, said that it was impossible for him to control all members of his alliance, Mr. Arlacchi said.