Though the Taliban help protect the fields by fighting against the police, they also do so by eliciting their tacit cooperation. In the mountain town of Cinar on the Kandahar-Helmand border, 20 yards away from the mud-brick compound housing the district police heardquarters, a large field of poppies flourishes. Captain Said Farad, an Afghani army commander based just outside the town, said that the district chief in the region has no choice but to cooperate with the Taliban: The last three chiefs sent there by the governor were killed.
“The police definitely have a hand in the poppies. Those two vehicles near the compound help with the drug smuggling and run supplies for the Taliban,” Farad says. “Nobody will kill the current chief because he had a deal with the Taliban.”
Since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, the old mujahideen warlords and drug lords have taken positions in Afghanistan’s new democracy, and poppy cultivation and drug production have skyrocketed. None of this is a secret. According to a recent report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, “This emerging underworld is connected through payment and patronage to senior political figures who provide the required protection.”
Qayoum Babak, a political analyst in Balkh Province, says, “Many of the ministries involved in poppy-eradication plans are the main cultivators of the crop. These officials will never get rid of poppy, since they are the main beneficiaries. They are just trying to defraud the world community.” The drug trade has corrupted virtually every level of Afghan society, notably law enforcement and the judicial system.
And the corruption reaches the highest echelons of the Afghan government. Last year, the DEA compiled a list of the 14 most important drug smugglers in Afghanistan. In cooperation with US authorities in Kabul, president Hamid Karzai managed to have two names removed from the DEA list: Mohammed Daud, the assistant interior minister personally in charge of drug eradication, and Wali Karzai, the brother of the president himself.
Chris Alexander, deputy special representative of the UN Secretary General, even joked about it during a press conference in Kabul last November. Speaking of the Afghani narco-trade, he quipped, “It is important to realize that not everyone [in the government] is involved.” When the laughter died down, he added, “But it is an absolute imperative to remove those who are.”
At present, the reverse seems to be happening. On the top floor of a Soviet-built apartment building at the edge of Kabul lives General Aminullah Anarkhil. He used to be in charge of security and customs at Kabul International Airport. We sat on pillows on the floor of his living room, surrounded by pictures of arrested drug mules and their contraband, hidden in body packs, capsules, and elsewhere. Anarkhil helped create a secure international airport from little more than an airstrip adjoined by some wooden shacks and damaged buildings. Undaunted by the paltry facilities, he began to intercept and arrest drug couriers. But the smugglers mysteriously kept being released once they were out of Anarkhil’s direct custody. After a month of these arrests, people from Attorney General Abdul Jabbar Sabit’s office showed up to investigate unspecified corruption charges. Then Anarkhil was fired. He is convinced it was because he was interfering with the drug-trafficking business. “I received many death threats, telling me that I should stop, I would be killed, and so on,” he says.
Anarkhil fears for the safety of his family. The government took away his bodyguards when he was fired. “It is a very powerful and dangerous mafia,” he says. “They are very well connected in the government.” Since Anarkhil was fired, no drug couriers have been arrested at the Kabul airport.
All that said though, things may finally be looking up for the current antipoppy campaign. It’s starting to gain some powerful supporters, namely, the big drug traders. It’s the same situation as it was with the Taliban’s 2000 opium ban. Last season there was overproduction of 30 percent. “I’ll be very happy if the eradicators are successful,” said one trafficker in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, early this spring. “I have lots of poppy stored. If they don’t destroy poppy, I’m afraid the price will come down.” Which has actually started to happen already. In Balagh, the price for one kilo of teryak has suddenly plunged from $100 to $30. Most local farmers have given up on planting poppies for this season: “We live in a flat, accessible area and cannot hide our fields. There are no Taliban around here. The policemen would still demand the same bribes as last year, therefore we have ceased cultivation this year.”
Officials from the office of the governor in Mazar-i-Sharif laud this decline in poppy cultivation as a great success in their antipoppy campaign. In reality, it is no more than a market correction.
As the poppy farmer in Balagh said: “I still have half a dozen oil-barrels full at home and so do all my neighbors. If we would sell now, we would lose—so we win by waiting for better prices!”
CHRISTOPH REUTER
Christoph is a reporter for Germany’s Stern magazine and the author of My Body Is a Weapon.
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