MUST READ: AFGHANISTAN'S DRUG TRADE & HOW IT FUNDS TALIBAN OPERATIONS

Afghanistan's Drug Trade and How it Funds Taliban Operations
By Hayder Mili & Jacob Townsend

The opium economy in Afghanistan is a key component of the counter-insurgency campaign, yet remains one of the most difficult issues to tackle. It is a critical problem facing international efforts to create a functional government in Kabul that can prosecute counter-terrorism on its own territory. A successful counter-narcotics intervention would have the added benefit of undermining an important terrorist funding source in arenas as diverse as Chechnya, Xinjiang and Central Asia. While coalition and Afghan officials regularly acknowledge the power that the narco-economy has over their ambitions, it has proven exceptionally challenging to turn this into a national strategy that incorporates counter-narcotics into counter-insurgency and provides the resources for its execution. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium production had a boom year in 2006, rising to 6,100 metric tons. This marked a 49% increase over 2005, yielding an estimated $755 million to farmers on the basis of a slightly decreased farm-gate price of $125 per kilogram of dry opium. With the national government’s revenues at less than $350 million for 2006, the opium economy is a formidable financial power base beyond the state’s control. Good weather conditions are expected in 2007, suggesting another huge harvest.

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Pertinent Links:

1) Afghanistan's Drug Trade and How it Funds Taliban Operations