Failure™ Magazine

Seeds of Terror

How heroin is bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under History

What about the idea that Afghanistan is Obama’s Vietnam?
Afghanistan could become Obama’s Vietnam if it’s not handled correctly. Fighting an insurgency is very complex and requires a large number of troops, which is not cheap. However, if properly resourced and implemented I believe it will work. That said, after eight years of drift, it’s going to be very hard to turn things around.

Do you think it will take another 9/11-type attack to focus attention on how the drug trade is funding terror groups?
I hope not. There is now much greater understanding within the military that drugs and crime are a major source of funding for the Taliban and other extremist groups. In addition to the opium trade, which provides the Taliban and other groups with hundreds of millions of dollars in profits every year, the various groups are also engaged in kidnapping, extortion, and taxing legal goods. [The Taliban] is like a shadow government that is collecting tax, putting money into central coffers, and using it for their war effort. The Taliban is really out-governing the Karzai government. I’m not suggesting they are a model of good governance, but they are more effective.

What are they doing with the money?
That’s a very good question. They are earning far more than they need to conduct their operations. By my estimates, the Taliban are earning as much as half a billion dollars a year off of drugs and other criminal activities.

On the Pakistani side of the border the potential for earning is much higher, and there is clear evidence that various groups linked to al Qaeda are deeply involved with moving drugs as they leave the region. What are they planning to do with all that money? It’s something the West needs to be worried about, because you don’t see evidence of Taliban commanders living large the way a major drug smuggler like Pablo Escobar did. What are they saving up for?

The Taliban seem more like drug smugglers than religious extremists.
The Taliban are in the process of morphing. I’m not suggesting that they have put aside their intention of driving western forces out of Afghanistan, and I think the rising casualty rates prove that. But there is evidence that an increasing number of Taliban commanders are just in it to make a buck. This is a transformation that has been witnessed in other insurgencies. Various anti-state groups—throughout history and across the world—regardless of their religious base or political affiliation have become involved in crime, and then their involvement in crime changes the nature of the group over time. I think we’re watching that happen in Afghanistan.

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