Taliban Finances
The piece this morning on the Taliban's financial network reminds me of Napoleon's famous quote, "an army marches on its stomach". Without the up to $400 million from the opium trade, that is used to pay the fighters, the Taliban would be a far less serious threat. Although Richard Holbrooke tries to talk down the importance of the drug trade, he is really talking through his hat.
So here is a notion that might give the Afghanistan government (when there is one) some sway with the rural populace and take away the Taliban funding--make Afghanistan the center of the legal opioid industry. Since 1916 pharmaceutical firms have been manufacturing synthetic opioids for pain management. Over 200 million opioid prescriptions are filled in the U.S. annually with worldwide sales of opioids reaching $7.5 billion in 2007. Drugs like Rush Limbaugh's favorite Oxycodone are a synthesized form of one ingredient of opium. Why not form a Opium Cartel with the world's major pharmaceutical companies, use some of the billions they get from manufacturing and selling the synthetic opium and just buy up all the real stuff from the Afghani farmers? It would bind them to the central government and if the operation was supervised by the World Health Organization we could hopefully prevent "leakage" from a corrupt government , allow Afghanistan to take a tax off the top of the legitimate sales and still supply the worldwide pain management market.
Brilliant. Exactly the kind of against the grain thinking that could make a real difference. They'll never do it, of course, but they should.
October 19, 2009 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
What is missing here is the fact that, under Taliban rule (2001), the opium production in Afghanistan was held to almost nothing. The US occupation and "nation building" reinstituted the opium trade in Afghanistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan
Give sredit where credit is due.
October 19, 2009 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good point. Of course it's probably better to have an opium trade and no Taliban than Taliban rulers and no opium trade.
October 19, 2009 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
my recollection is that the Taliban was receiving foreign aid from the US in 2001, because they had largely stemmed the opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan.
the Taliban were in effect, taking protection money.
October 19, 2009 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, yes.
Protecting the interests of American drug companies who were making and marketing synthetic opiates.
.
October 20, 2009 9:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good idea but I'm not sure it'll work without the end of drug prohibition. As long as there is an illegal market for it there will always be the criminal element involved. The same thing happened with alcohol here in the 20's...all prohibition did was fill the coffers of criminal enterprises. Will the pharmaceutical firms be giving them a better price than what they can get on the illicit market?
With so much of the money which funds attacks on America coming from the illicit drug trade, and no possible way to stop people from taking drugs, the best way to solve the problem is to scrap the war on drugs and try something else...make it all legal, with the requisite common sense restraints on its use and availability, and cut out the heart of the problem which is the profits. Not that I expect common sense to prevail any time soon though...
October 19, 2009 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly. If these problems were legalized, regulated and taxed we'd have something. But not until then.
October 19, 2009 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
You could make an argument that alcohol prohibition made the current "drug war" more difficult, because prohibition helped create and strengthen organized crime. When the 21st Amendment passed, these existing criminal organizations had to find a new business -- why not illegal drugs?
-- ARG
October 19, 2009 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well even if there wasn't prohibition the syndicates of the early 20th century did just fine with prostitution, gambling and stolen goods. Prohibition provided them a cash cow like one they had never seen before and took them to another level though. As far as Afghanistan goes, they have been harvesting poppys in that region for many centuries and still will be many centuries from now.
October 20, 2009 12:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree, Libertine. If drugs were decriminalized, at least, not only would the profit motive decrease, but the Violence. I wonder how many have been killed as 'collateral damage' in the drug trade? Picture also many of our urban neighborhoods--kids being drug runners for drug operations that provide quick and big bucks to 'employees'. Why get an education and a job when you can cut the corners and earn a pile right now? Many or most young black men, at least, don't believe they will live past their mid-twenties anyway. How sad is that?
I hear many claim that in this country we spend as much on a failed Drug War as we do on the purchase of illegal drugs; that's crazy.
October 20, 2009 7:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a concern, but by no means a guarantee of failure.
Remember that the real money is waaaaay downstream of the actual producers. The black market economy functions like most other economies - raw material producers tend to get shafted.
No way in hell do any farmers see even 1/10 of street value from the Taliban, other traffickers, you name it.
Give them that 1/10(or more) street value to:
- sell strictly within the arranged market of actual pharmaceutical manufacturers
- commit to reducing acreage and transition to other crops
The Taliban is using them to raise revenue - they cannot compete in a bidding war for the raw material.
This doesn't mitigate the threat to farmers who sell to the high bidder, that someone will show up at a family gathering and explode. But it's a start at prying the trade out of the hands of the various violent groups using it to fund operations.
October 20, 2009 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
concur X 4 w/above
ps Taplin, you ought to check your html - everytime you insert a chart or image your posts get all jacked up.
October 19, 2009 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hell, Limbaugh alone ought to be able to subsidize half of Afghanistan's output.
October 19, 2009 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Zipperupus, Saladin and others have discussed this extensively in previous postings, and it was very interesting. My impression is that it turns out that the legal market for opoids is very limited, and the manufacturing of synthetic opoids is cheaper and easier.
Now, if you could make it illegal to manufacture synthetic painkillers, maybe you'd have something. (Plus it would be refreshing to see legal drug kingpins perpwalked from their offices, their suit jackets hanging open and their ties all akimbo....)
Or perhaps a market could be developed for "natural" or organically grown opoids as opposed to synthetic ones. How intriguing would it be to purchase morphine from the natural pharmacy at Whole Foods or your local co-op?
Just thinkin' outta the box here.
October 19, 2009 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am currently afflicted with multiple myeloma (a bone marrow cancer), and am presently recovering from back surgery on 3 separate lumbar fractures. The doctors have prescribed morphine for my pain management. I take a time release oral tablet twice/day, plus am allowed to request a small dose via IV once every 4 hrs if needed.
From my perspective, I am satisfied with the pain meds' effect, and have not requested changing to a synthetic. I do not have extensive experience with other pain medications though.
October 19, 2009 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
This demonstrates my lack of knowledge about this issue. I assumed that anything available in the US would be a synthetic product.
So, the morphine you take is natural morphine? Do you know where the crop comes from? Turkey?
October 19, 2009 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
erica, i do not know for sure if the pain meds i take are derived from poppies or are synthesised. I am assuming the former, because if they were synthetics, the nomenclature would likely reflect this. It would not be called morphine, but instead by its pharmaceutical brand name.
October 19, 2009 4:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
makes sense
October 19, 2009 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
So The Taliban uses a Value Added Tax (VAT)on the opium trade to help fund itself?
October 19, 2009 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's probably why the service is so surly in Waziristan.
October 19, 2009 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
That figure of 200 million seems to high considering the population stands at 380 million. The highest figure I found was 100 million in 2005, that figure compiled by a private company and the study paid for by the pharmaceutical industry.
Synthetic opoids are cheaper to manufacture than natural op. drugs, which is why they don't use natural ops in the first place.
Your only reference is from an organization recommending penny stocks which seem to be opportunistic and self-serving.
October 19, 2009 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Aw man, all I have to say is read "Sea of Poppies" by Amitav Ghosh. As with every other American imperial venture, the British have been there, done that and bought the t-shirt. The t-shirt says "My parents subjugated a subcontinent and all I got was this lousy opium trade whereby British "businessmen" force peasants to grow nothing but opium within a state-controlled monopoly system, and then pack that same opium into boats with Christian missionaries and sell it in China, "creating" a market for the drug which led to such wholesome historical events as the Boxer Rebellion and the Opium Wars.
British Empire = Original Gangstaz.
October 19, 2009 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
So we need to ignore this part of the story:
' American officials say that they have been surprised to learn in recent months that foreign donations, rather than opium, are the single largest source of cash for the Taliban.
“In the past there was a kind of a feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in June. “That is simply not true.” '
The 'Taliban is funded by drugs' story line has been stated by the media for sometime but I can never find any evidence justifying it. Drugs are probably part of the story and your suggestion seems reasonable but if it doesn't defund the Taliban then it doesn't really address the Taliban funding issue. I suspect they're being funded by the same wealthy mid easterns that had funded Al Queda and madrassa building throughout Pakistan. The NY Times story seems to support this suspicion. Cutting off that funding would be difficult and maybe impossible therefore its easier to blame the drug trade.
October 20, 2009 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
That sugestion, combined with bringing enough Pashtuns into the government so that they don't feel like Tajiks are running everything, would go a long way toward enabling us to leave Afghanistan in a good way. Within the next decade we will leave Afghanistan one way or the other. I hope the Administration's strategy recognizes that.
October 21, 2009 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
AFGHANISTAN VOTE RECOUNT IS A COMPLETE FARCE AND A FRAUD
The Afghan Presidential elections were rigged in many ways, however the vote recount is even bigger farce. It seems that EU & US representatives conducting this exercise had a pre-determined goal to bring Hamid Karzai's vote below 50% in order to call a run off election.
The two Afghan individuals involved with recount effort resigned in disgust a few days ago, when they discovered the real mandate of EU representatives. It is amazing how Mr. Karzai's vote has been brought down to 49.6% (just below 50%) to order a recount. First the elections were a farce and now the recount is an even bigger farce.
If the intention is to establish democracy and rule of law in Afghanistan, then this is a total violation of all democratic norms. The Afghan populace has no interest whatsoever in these goings on as they don't see their life changing either under Karzai or Abdullah. After all these two gentlemen have been center stage for last eight years and are responsible for the failure of Afghan civil and military administration. Efforts are now afoot by EU & US to get Karzai to form a coalition with Abdullah, a sure recipe for disaster.
In the last elections, less than 30% Afghan electorate voted and when fraudulent votes are counted out, the count is probably less than 25%. In a run off election less than 20% are likely to vote. If President Obama and Hillary Clinton are betting on this democratic move, then it is doomed to failure.
What is needed is to rescind the fraudulent elections, disqualify Karzai and Abdullah for they represent drug and crime syndicates, form a Government of national unity of all Afghan ethnic groups for a period of one year and then have fresh elections. That would allow for healing to take place in fractious Afghan society and also for new leadership to emerge. The people of Afghanistan need to be inclusive in this process, they are then likely be more involved in the democratic process.
A foreign imposed formula is only likely to bring more chaos, more ethnic rivalry and destabilization of the region resulting in foreign troops having to stay longer than they need to. Do the US public have the stomach for US forces to stay there another five years and can the US Military sustain continued war, I think not.
October 21, 2009 9:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
"A foreign imposed formula is only likely to bring more chaos, more ethnic rivalry and destabilization of the region..."
That foreign imposed formula being called "Democracy".
October 22, 2009 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink