July 2, 2007:
The reason you
hear so many reports of battles with the Taliban in Afghanistans Helmand
province, is because that one area (south of Kandahar and on the Pakistani
border), currently produces over 40 percent of the worlds heroin. With less than
a million people, Helmand has long been a Taliban stronghold. The Taliban are
basically a coalition of Pushtun tribes from southern Afghanistan. The Taliban
were unpopular in most of Afghanistan because non-Pustuns (about 60 percent
Afghans), and many Pushtuns, did not like having the Taliban lifestyle and
customs crammed down their throats.
Helmand became a source of
heroin during Taliban rule. The farmers of Helmand paid a share of their
profits to the Taliban, and shipped the drugs out through Pakistan, or west via
Iran. A lot of the Helmand opium and heroin stayed in Afghanistan, Iran and
Pakistan, and the addiction problem in those three countries has been growing
for a decade. Helmand heroin "taxes" are still a major source of income for the
Taliban, and NATO military operations in Helmand over the last two years has
forced the Taliban to stand and fight. If they lose control of Helmand, and the
Afghan government shuts down a lot of the heroin production, the Taliban will
suffer some serious damage. While the Taliban is a political and religious
organization, it's most active members expect to be paid. Without the drug
cash, the Taliban payroll shrinks.
Most of the poppy growing
takes place along the Helmand river, which runs through the desert-like
province. The farmers don't want to lose their highly profitable poppy crops,
and the drug gangs don't want to see their labs (which convert the poppies into
opium and heroin) destroyed. Heroin is big business in Afghanistan, which now
accounts for over 90 percent of the worlds production. Because the Afghan
government has been slow to crack down on heroin production (mainly because the
drug producing tribes were hostile to it, and many government officials were
paid off), the world wide heroin supply has grown nearly fifty percent in the
last seven years. Almost all the growth has come from Afghanistan.