rssOpium, al-Qaeda and the Helmand ‘Sideshow’
Monday, August 10, 2009 at 9:52 am
- 6 Comments
So, according to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the strategic goal of the Helmand river valley campaign is to disrupt and deny opium revenue to the insurgency. There’s a first principle problem here, though, and one that raises a separate question about whether Helmand is, indeed, a “sideshow,” as an anonymous senior military official told The Wall Street Journal.
Jim Risen has a story in The New York Times today about a Senate report about a military hit list of insurgents with ties to the drug trade. Buried within it is this bit about whose operations opium actually fund:
In a surprise, the Senate report reveals that the United States intelligence community believes that the Taliban has been getting less money from the drug trade than previous public studies have suggested. The Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency both estimate that the Taliban obtains about $70 million a year from drugs.
The Senate report found that American officials did not believe that Afghan drug money was fueling Al Qaeda, which instead relies on contributions from wealthy individuals and charities in Persian Gulf countries, as well as aid organizations working inside Afghanistan.
So the Taliban doesn’t get as much money from opium as previously believed — last year a U.N. official estimated the Taliban could clear half a billion dollars annually from drugs — and in any case, the opium revenue isn’t going to al-Qaeda, which is the whole reason we care about the Taliban in the first place. How much sense does it make to focus so many resources on an indirect target?
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6 Comments
Pingback posted August 10, 2009 @ 11:39 am
[...] View original post here: The Washington Independent » Opium, al-Qaeda and the Helmand … [...]
Pingback posted August 12, 2009 @ 8:04 pm
[...] Independent observers, though, clearly see merit to The Journal’s headline. Some not-so-independent observers do, too: Kimberly Kagan, an adviser to McChrystal’s 60-day [...]
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Comment posted August 24, 2009 @ 10:16 am
Perhaps you should consider that, since 2001, opium production in Afghanistan has increased by a multiplier of 41, from 185 tons annually to 7700 tons annually. A larger concern is that because Afghanistan is producing so much poppy, distribution has increased by 500%. That's right, in 8 years, it has risen from 1540 tons internationally produced, to 8280 tons. Here's a few charts for you, in case the numbers don't seem to bring to light the severity of the problem, fostered by the ill-managed war in Afghanistan:
http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr145/hellst…
http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr145/hellst…
This problem fuels drug cartels, which in turn fuel illegal activities all over the world. We can look at the issue from a narrow perspective, and think this drug trade, from a direct purchase/sale, bring in only 80 million, but i'm less inclined to believe a U.S. government Senate report at this point in time. It is unfathomable to think a drug industry has grown by 500% and yet the major contributors to the production of this industry are only receiving a penny out of every $10. Opium production in Afghanistan is fueled by need for cash on the part of the farmers, and a need for cash on the part of Taliban and Al Qaeda. With such a dramatic increase in opium sales, one cannot reasonably accept the Senate's report, at least not in the context of your presentation. Perhaps it would help if you indicated exactly what that report is and where I (and others) can read it on the net.
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