New York Times Misleads on Taliban Role in Opium Trade

by Jeremy R. Hammond / December 1st, 2008

The New York Times reported this week that the Taliban have cut back on poppy cultivation and is stockpiling opium, grossly overstating the group’s role in the Afghanistan drug trade.

“Afghanistan has produced so much opium in recent years,” the Times reported Thursday, “that the Taliban are cutting poppy cultivation and stockpiling raw opium in an effort to support prices and preserve a major source of financing for the insurgency, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations drug office, says.”

Mr. Costa’s remarks came last week as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) prepared to release its Afghan Opium Survey 2008 report, the executive summary of which has already been available for some time. The now released report shows that poppy cultivation was reduced in much of Afghanistan and is even more highly concentrated in the south, with Helmand province being by far the biggest producer.

The Times states that the Taliban “have for several years ‘systematically encouraged’ opium cultivation as a way to finance their insurgency, the study said.” It notes that the UNODC has estimated that “the insurgents made as much as $300 million from the opium trade” last year.

“But after three years of bumper crops, including this one,” the Times continues, “the Taliban have succeeded almost too well, producing opium in amounts far in excess of world demand.”

Despite production far exceeding global demand, prices for the drug have not fallen as much as might be expected based solely on the supply and demand principle of the market. One explanation that has been put forward is that opium is being stockpiled.

(read full article)

Neil Comment:

Please bear in mind that the 2001 full stop in opium production that you see on the graph happened in January (before 9/11) and can be seen as a part of the Taliban's economic warfare against America by striking the CIA supported drug-lords in Afghanistan.

As Mike Ruppert put it:

Let's see now...
The Taliban in Afghanistan destroys their entire opium crop in January of 2001.
The United States bombs, attacks and has occupied Afghanistan since Oct 2001.
Now Afghanistan is the top heroin producer...
Hmmm...it's not about controlling drug profits, or is it?

The Lies About Taliban Heroin

Russia and Oil the Real Objectives With Heroin As A Weapon of War

A Replay of CIA's Vietnam-era Drug Dealing

FTW Revises Its Map On Economic Impacts

by Michael C. Ruppert

FTW, October 10, 2001 - The governments of the United States and Britain - along with a lap-dog mainstream media all too willing to regurgitate falsehoods - are feeding us a line of demonstrably inaccurate lies about the Taliban and opium. We are being warned of a "new flood" of al-Q'aeda opium as the war expands. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair boasts, "We will bomb their poppy fields," he neglects to mention that there aren't any poppy fields in Taliban controlled areas to bomb. This outrageous deception of the public, in an effort to stir up support for the war effort, is further evidence that most of the rest of the government's line following the attacks of September 11, is simply not credible.

A simple side-by-side comparison of reports from the UN and the U.S. government, along with major media stories from before and after the Sept. 11 attacks exposes the lie.

Even the U.S. State Department (www.state.gov/www/regions/sa/facts_taliban_drugs.html) acknowledges that in July 2000, Mullah Omar of the Taliban ordered a ban on poppy cultivation in all Taliban controlled regions of Afghanistan. That State Department Fact Sheet, published after Jan 1, 2000, however, expresses U.S. disbelief in the ban's effectiveness. This position is, however, flatly contradicted by some very credible sources, including Secretary of State Colin Powell. He gave the Taliban $43 million this May to replace the income lost to Afghani farmers as a result of the ban. Their wheat crops had failed due to the drought and they had no money from opium harvests to buy food. The middlemen who had stockpiled the opium had income. But the farmers, who had harvested in the summer of 2000, had already been paid.

(read full article)