7/28/2019 The Taliban Banned Poppy Production in Afghanistan and
the Drug Supply Was Disappearing in 2001
1/2
ban's Ban On Poppy A Success, U.S. Aides Say - New York
Times
10/24/2012
1:22://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on-poppy-a-success-us-aides-say.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm
Taliban's Ban On Poppy A Success, U.S. Aides SayBy BARBARA
CROSSETTEPublished: May 20, 2001
The first American narcotics experts to go to Afghanistan under
Taliban rule have concluded that the movement's ban on
opium-poppy
cultivation appears to have wiped out the world's largest crop
in less than a year, officials said today.
The American findings confirm earlier reports from the United
Nations drug control program that Afghanistan, which supplied about
three
quarters of the world's opium and most of the heroin reaching
Europe, had ended poppy planting in one season.
But the eradication of poppies has come at a terrible cost to
farming families, and experts say it will not be known until the
fall planting
season begins whether the Taliban can continue to enforce
it.
'It appears that the ban has taken effect,'' said Steven
Casteel, assistant administrator for intelligence at the Drug
Enforcement Administrat
n Washington.
The findings came in part from a Pakistan-based agent of the
administration who was one of the two Americans on the team just
returned
from eight days in the poppy-growing areas of Afghanistan.
Mr. Casteel said in an interview today that he was still
studying aerial images to determine if any new poppy-growing areas
had emerged. H
also said that some questions about the size of hidden opium and
heroin stockpiles near the northern border of Afghanistan remained
to banswered. But the drug agency has so far found nothing to
contradict United Nations reports.
The sudden turnaround by the Taliban, a move that left
international drug experts stunned when reports of near-total
eradication began to
come in earlier this year, opens the way for American aid to the
Afghan farmers who have stopped planting poppies.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced a $43
million grant to Afghanistan in additional emergency aid to cope
with th
effects of a prolonged drought. The United States has become the
biggest donor to help Afghanistan in the drought.
'We will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to
the Afghans,'' he said in a statement, ''including those farmers
who have fe
the impact of the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the
Taliban that we welcome.''
The Afghans are desperate for international help, but describe
their opposition to drug cultivation purely in religious terms.
At the State Department, James P. Callahan, director of Asian
affairs at the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affai
who was one of the experts sent to Afghanistan, described in an
interview how the Taliban had applied and enforced the ban. He was
told b
farmers that ''the Taliban used a system of
consensus-building.''
They framed the ban ''in very religious terms,'' citing Islamic
prohibitions against drugs, and that made it hard to defy, he
added. Those wh
defied the edict were threatened with prison.
Mr. Callahan said that in the southern provinces of Kandahar and
Helmand, where the Taliban's hold is strongest, farmers said they
would
rather starve than return to poppy cultivation -- and some of
them will, experts say.
In parts of Nangahar province in the east, where the Taliban's
hold is less complete, farmers told the visiting experts that they
would flee t
Pakistan or risk illegal crops rather than watch their families
die.
The end of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has come at a
huge cost to farmers, Mr. Callahan and Mr. Casteel said. The rural
econom
especially in the usual opium-poppy areas, had come to rely on
the narcotics trade. ''The bad side of the ban is that it's
bringing their count-- or certain regions of their country -- to
economic ruin,'' Mr. Casteel said. ''They are trying to replace the
crop with wheat, but that is easie
said than done.''
'Wheat needs more water and earns no money until it is sold,''
Mr. Casteel said. ''With the opium trade they used to get their
money up fro
The Taliban, who used to collect taxes on the movement of opium,
is also losing money, adding another layer of difficulty for a
government
that is already isolated and not recognized diplomatically by
most nations.
Afghanistan is now under United Nations sanctions, imposed at
the insistence of the United States because the Islamic movement
will not
turn over Osama bin Laden for trial in connection with attacks
on two American Embassies in Africa in 1998.
American experts and United Nations officials say the Taliban
are likely to face political problems if the effects of the opium
ban are
catastrophic and many people die.
World
