Taliban taps new income stream from drugs

Meth production spirals to become a significant revenue source for insurgents in Afghanistan

AFGHANISTAN is seeing a rise in methamphetamine drug production, potentially providing a new revenue stream for the Taliban in a country already notorious for opium and heroin.

The United Nations said seizures of the powerful stimulant had increased exponentially over the past five years but had “gone off the scale” in 2019. Taliban insurgents who are already estimated to make millions from opium are now taxing criminal gangs making “meth” in western Afghanistan.

Annual seizures by the Afghan authorities used to add up to no more than a few kilos. But in 2018 they hit 180kg (400lb) and in just the first half of 2019 rocketed past half a ton (650kg).

A study of drugs labs hit by US airstrikes in western Afghanistan found many were making meth as well as processing opium. David Mansfield, author of the study conducted by the London School of Economics, said Afghanistan had developed a burgeoning meth industry, apparently with expertise from neighbouring Iran. He said that Afghans who worked in labs in Iran learnt the skills and returned to “set up shop” at home.

Gangs in Iran had typically used over-the-counter medicines to extract the active ingredient, pseudoephedrine. But in Afghanistan a similar substance is found in a local bush called ephedra, potentially creating another drug crop.

American and Afghan officials said that meth-producing labs were among 68 drug factories hit by airstrikes in a May campaign to cut off funding to the insurgents. Mr Mansfield said the international coalition often overestimated how much revenue the Taliban raised from taxing drug production in areas it controlled, but added that the insurgents now appeared to be levying a flat tax on “powdah” production, whether heroin or meth.

Drug trafficking analysts have been unable to ascertain the destination of the meth being smuggled out of the country. Some is consumed within Afghanistan but shipments have been known to be intercepted while heading for Iran and Pakistan, the UN said. Experts do not know if it is then packaged for shipments further afield.

Mr Mansfield said: “If this ‘ephedra model’ is reducing costs without having a significant effect on quality, you would expect this product to travel.

“It certainly seems to be produced for export.”

♦ The Taliban is on the brink of an expected deal with the US to end 18 years of fighting, it was reported, though Afghanistan remains under a growing threat, this time from an Isil affiliate. Dozens of people were wounded in a series of bomb attacks at restaurants and public spaces yesterday – Afghanistan’s independence centenary – in Jalalabad, 65 miles east of Kabul. It came a day after 63 people died in the capital in a bomb attack at a wedding.