FROM THE FIELD: TALIBAN’S AFGHAN HEROIN FACTORIES FUND INSURGENCY

Militants have long taxed poppy farmers, but officials are concerned they are now refining crop into drugs

The Taliban, who banned poppy cultivation when they ruled Afghanistan, now have significant control over heroin production and are making billions of dollars that go towards funding their insurgency.

Afghanistan produces 80 per cent of the world’s opium and processed about 4,800 tonnes of the drug last year, making US$3 billion (Dh11.01bn), the United Nations says.

The Taliban have for years taxed poppy farmers to fund their insurgency, but western officials are concerned they are now running their own morphine and heroin factories.

“I pretty firmly feel they are processing all the harvest,” said William Brownfield, the US assistant secretary for drugs and law enforcement.

“Everything they harvest is duly processed inside the country. They receive more revenues if they process it before it has left the country. We are dealing with very loose figures but drug trafficking amounts to billions of dollars every year, from which the Taliban is taking a substantial percentage.”

Poppies are cheap and easy to grow and make up half Afghanistan’s agricultural output. Farmers are paid about $163 a kilogram for the raw opium that oozes out of poppy seed pods. Once it is refined into heroin, the Taliban sell it in regional markets for between $2,300 and $3,500 a kilogram. By the time it reaches Europe it has a wholesale price of $45,000.

An adviser to Afghan anti-narcotics squads said there has been an increase in the seizure of chemicals required to turn opium into morphine, such as acid anhydride.

Sixty-six tonnes of the chemical were seized last year, while 50 tonnes were taken in the first six months this year.

In July, 15 tonnes were confiscated near the border with Iran, the start of a popular drug route to Europe through Turkey, the adviser said.

Seizures of morphine have also increased. Fifty-seven tonnes were discovered in the first half this year compared with 43 tonnes for the whole of last year. The adviser said only about 10 per cent of what is produced is discovered.

“It is easy to build a rudimentary laboratory – walls of cob, a thatched roof – and when the operation is finished it is evacuated,” he said.

Afghanistan’s interior ministry said between January and June this year, 46 drug factories were shut down, compared with 16 in the first half of last year.

The US drug enforcement administration says the crackdown has deprived traffickers of about $300 million in income since the turn of the year.

Another western official was adamant that the Taliban have their own laboratories. He said the southern province of Helmand, where about 80 per cent of Afghan poppies are grown, was a “big drug factory”.

“Helmand is all about drugs, poppy and Taliban,” he said. “The majority of their funding comes from the poppy, morphine and heroin labs. Of course they have their own labs.”

The UN office on drugs and crime said opium production provided about half the Taliban’s revenues last year.

David Dadge, a spokesman for the office, said there was “anecdotal evidence” that Taliban commanders were processing opiates, but no proof they were running factories.

For the Afghan interior ministry, there is little doubt.

“The Taliban need more money to run their war machine and buy guns, that is why they have taken control of drug factories,” said Sayed Mehdi Kazemi, a spokesman for the ministry’s narcotics department.

The US has spent $8.6bn since 2002 in the war against drugs in Afghanistan, but Afghan-sourced heroin is still reaching North America.

“More than 90 per cent of heroin used in the US is of Mexican origin. But in Canada more than 90 per cent is of Afghan origin,” Mr Brownfield said.

The Taliban need more money to run their war, that is why the’ve taken control of drug factories