In horrors reminiscent of the Roman coliseum, Kabul Sports Stadium packs in capacity crowds of 30,000 to witness Taliban justice. Adulterers are flogged, murderers killed, and thieves have their right hand and left foot amputated. Taliban soldiers gleefully parade around the stadium holding up severed limbs.
The Taliban movement originated in the dismal Pakistani refugee camps during the Afghan-Soviet conflict, and grew during the Afghan Civil war between rival political factions following the Soviet departure. The Taliban promised to bring peace to an Afghan population weary of 16 years of warfare. Instead, they turned on the Afghan population.
Since Sept. 27, 1996, when Taliban forces overran Kabul, a reign of terror has ruled the capital and other Afghan cities. Taliban leaders imposed their highly restrictive version of Sharia, strict Islamic law, including numerous rules not sanctioned by the Koran. Playing music, singing non-religious songs, or reading anything published outside of Afghanistan is illegal. So is flying a kite because it might interrupt prayers.
The Taliban forbid women to work or attend school and enforce purdah, mandatory veiling with a burqa, a full-length garment with a small woven screen over the eyes. Men are required to grow beards and wear skullcaps or turbans. Thugs, sanctioned by the Ministry for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice, prowl the streets looking for prey.
"The Taliban have their religious police," says an official with the US State Department's Human Rights Division. "They've been know to beat some women if their ankles are showing or if they are walking with a male who is not a close relative." Men and boys wielding car antennas, electrical cord, or wooden clubs often do the beatings on the spot.
While the Taliban administer their brand of religious terrorism over the Afghan population, they quietly support their movement by dealing in drugs. US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reports show that Afghan opium production dropped to 415 metric tonnes in 1990, but in 1997, under Taliban rule, over 2800 metric tonnes were cultivated. By last year, Afghanistan produced a staggering 3,656 metric tonnes, 70 percent of the world's opium crop.
Despite their claim to a strict Islamic state, the Taliban chose to ignore the prohibition on drugs because they were directly profiting from it. According to the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), the Taliban impose a tax of 10 to 20 percent upon people who grow, process, transport, or sell opiates, morphine base, and heroin.
The Taliban make money on each step, from opium fields to street sales, reaping US$40 to US$50 million a year in revenues. And if the Taliban is directly involved in the drug trade, as alleged in reports cited by the UN Committee of Experts on Resolution 1933, its profits may be far greater.
Seeking international recognition from the UN, as well as several hundred million dollars in additional aid, the Taliban placed a ban on the growing of opium in July last year. As a result, the official calculation of the Afghan opium crop for this year fell to only 74 metric tonnes.
In spite of the reduction in opium cultivation, the flow of drugs out of Afghanistan remained the same, and even increased in the Central Asian Republics. The UN Drug Control Program (UNDCP) estimates that Afghanistan might have stockpiled as much as 60 percent of its opium production each year since 1996. As a result, their ban on opium is little more than a public relations and marketing ploy.
By warehousing opium, the Taliban has driven up the price. According to the DEA, before the July prohibition last year, a kilo of Afghan opium was US$44. A few months later, the price jumped to US$350 to US$400 a kilo. The cost of heroin also increased at similar levels from US$579 a kilo in July last year to US$4564 this year. Much of the profits go straight into Taliban coffers. Following the terrorist attacks on the US, Afghan drug dealers, anticipating reprisals that would disrupt processing and distribution channels, reduced the price of opium, creating a surplus of cheap drugs.
Heroin labs, scattered along the borders of Pakistan and the central Asian republics, are doing a booming business, in spite of the Taliban claims that they've been destroyed. In 1998, virtually all of the heroin labs in Pakistan moved into Afghanistan where the Taliban protected them. Large processing labs are also located in southern Afghanistan, near the Taliban headquarters at Kandahar. The provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, both Taliban strongholds, are two primary areas for the cultivation of opium poppy Afghanistan does not produce anhydride and other chemicals used in the processing of heroin. These chemicals, often labeled as cleaning agents or hidden inside consumer products, are shipped in from China, India, Pakistan, and the Central Asian Republics.
The steady seizure of drug-related chemicals destined for Afghanistan since the ban on opium cultivation indicates Afghan labs are still producing heroin.
Several clues confirm that heroin production has not been adversely effected. Seizures of heroin, morphine base, and opium along the transit routes of Pakistan, Iran, and the central Asian republics have not decreased.
"In spite of the ban, Afghanistan's neighbors have seen record seizures," notes a US INL official.
Furthermore, according to the UN report, Global Illicit Drug Trends for 2001, the greatest increases in seizures over the last few years were reported by the Central Asian countries. In Tajikistan alone, heroin seizures rose from 60kg in 1997, to 271kg in 1998, to 709kg in 1999, to 1.9 metric tonnes last year. Seizures in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan have also increased.
"The Kazakhstanis recognize they have a problem," notes a US State Department official. "They are starting to get alarmed by the number of addicts they have and by the increase in incidents of HIV. Ninety percent of all people with HIV in Kazakhstan are intravenous drug users."
Iran, a major transit route for drug smugglers, has also been plagued by Afghan heroin. By 1999, Iran accounted for 47 percent of the world's heroin and morphine seizures, an increase of over 100 percent from the pre-Taliban era. Despite increased vigilance on the part of authorities, a growing number of Iranian youth are becoming addicted to heroin.
The scourge of Afghan heroin has hit Pakistan the hardest. Addiction rates soared from less than 20,000 in 1980 to over 2,000,000 today, making it the world's largest heroin addict population, both per capita and in absolute numbers. "We're still seeing seizures of heroin in Pakistan that is of Afghan origin," notes a US official with INL. "The actual consumption in the area is by people who are already poor and exploited."
Ironically, Pakistan, the primary country responsible for bringing the Taliban to power, has been paid back by the corruption of their officials, addiction of their citizens, and the economic devastation brought on by heroin and AIDS.
United Arab Emirates, Oman, Syria, Egypt, and other Islamic countries have also suffered from an increased flow of Afghan heroin since the Taliban seized control. In fact, the Taliban have the distinction of being the single largest horde of drug dealers afflicting the Islamic world. In addition to opiates, they also deal in marijuana and hashish, which they push on their Muslim neighbors.
Heroin leaves Afghanistan by a variety of different routes. UN sources claim that up to 65 percent of all Afghan opium and heroin is transported through the central Asian republics to the Russian Federation, Baltic States, Belarus, and the Ukraine on their way to lucrative European markets.
According to the DEA, about 80 percent of the heroin in Europe is of Afghan origin.
Russian criminal organizations are heavily involved in the drug trade and the sale of armaments stolen from Soviet military arsenals. They are reputed to have direct ties with the Taliban government, as well as al-Qaeda, and other terrorist groups interested in obtaining weapons, chemical and biological materials, and nuclear components
Some politicians and religious leaders find a way to justify any activity, no matter how illegal, by waving the flag of nationalism or invoking the name of God. So it is with the Taliban, responsible for the misery of millions of Muslims who languish in the despair of drug addiction. Their motto might very well be, "Heroin for our Muslim brothers, profits for us."
James Emery is a journalist and anthropologist based in the US.
In an article published in Newsweek on Monday last week, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged China to retake territories it lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. “If it is really for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t China take back Russia?” Lai asked, referring to territories lost in 1858 and 1860. The territories once made up the two flanks of northern Manchuria. Once ceded to Russia, they became part of the Russian far east. Claims since then have been made that China and Russia settled the disputes in the 1990s through the 2000s and that “China
Trips to the Kenting Peninsula in Pingtung County have dredged up a lot of public debate and furor, with many complaints about how expensive and unreasonable lodging is. Some people even call it a tourist “butchering ground.” Many local business owners stake claims to beach areas by setting up parasols and driving away people who do not rent them. The managing authority for the area — Kenting National Park — has long ignored the issue. Ultimately, this has affected the willingness of domestic travelers to go there, causing tourist numbers to plummet. In 2008, Taiwan opened the door to Chinese tourists and in
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) arrest is a significant development. He could have become president or vice president on a shared TPP-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) ticket and could have stood again in 2028. If he is found guilty, there would be little chance of that, but what of his party? What about the third force in Taiwanese politics? What does this mean for the disenfranchised young people who he attracted, and what does it mean for his ambitious and ideologically fickle right-hand man, TPP caucus leader Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌)? Ko and Huang have been appealing to that
RSS