Taliban Insurgency Funded by Poppy and Marble

Funding is always a large part of any effective and sustained insurgency, in addition to other factors such as local population support, arms supply, depth of insurgents commitment, recruiting and training. Several recent reports indicated that the Taliban are doing very well on the funding front on both sides of the border. Of course, the funding from other enterprises pales in comparison to the poppy trade, that occurs in plain sight with active connivance, of the Afghan authorities. Below are recent media reports that capture the essence of what is going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan's FATA region.

An excerpt from the National Security Network(NSN) report:

In plain view of the United States and the international community, the opium trade is overwhelming Afghanistan’s legitimate government. The facts are stunning: in 2001, after a Taliban ban on poppy cultivation, Afghanistan only produced 11 percent of the world’s opium. Today it produces 93 percent of the global crop; the drug trade accounts for half of its GDP; and nearly one in seven Afghans is involved in the opium trade. In Afghanistan, more land is being used for poppy cultivation than for coca cultivation in all of Latin America. The trade strengthens the government’s enemies and – unless its large place in the Afghan economy is permanently curtailed by crop replacements and anti-poverty efforts – poses a potentially fatal obstacle to keeping the country stable and peaceful.

Afghanistan is caught in a vicious cycle. The fall of the Taliban brought the end of their highly coercive crop reduction program. A combination of U.S. inattention and widespread insecurity and poverty allowed poppy cultivation to explode. As the opium economy expanded, it spread corruption and empowered anti-government forces, undermining the Afghan state, leading to more poverty and instability, which in turn only served to further entrench the drug trade. Meanwhile the illicit activity has been a boon to the Taliban insurgency, which has traditionally used poppy cultivation as a lever to improve its own position. Today, the Taliban relies on opium revenues to purchase weapons, train its members, and buy support.


A recent New York Times report talked about how the Taliban took over a stone quarry in Pakistan's tribal belt to generate revenue. Here is an excerpt of the story:

A rare, unescorted visit to the region this month, during which the Taliban detained for two days a freelance reporter and a photographer working for The New York Times, revealed how the Taliban were taking over territory, using the income they exact to strengthen their hold and turn themselves into a self-sustaining fighting force. The quarry alone has already brought the Taliban tens of thousands of dollars, Mr. Zaman said.

The seizure of the quarry is a measure of how in recent months, as the Pakistani military has pulled back under a series of peace deals, the Pakistani Taliban have extended their reach through more of the rugged territory in northern Pakistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA.

Today the Taliban not only settle disputes in their consolidated domain but they also levy taxes, smuggle drugs and other contraband, and impose their own brand of rough justice, complete with courts and prisons.

An earlier New York Times report last year implicated the Afghan Police in the drug trade. Here's an excerpt:

....an altogether different side of Afghanistan’s security forces was evident when a Dutch and Afghan patrol visited a police compound in Oruzgan Province. The police officers there were cultivating poppy within the compound’s walls, openly participating in the heroin trade. The Afghan Army squad that visited them, itself only partly equipped, did nothing.


Talking about the effectiveness of the Taliban as a fighting force, here are a couple of statements President Karazai of Afghanistan made to Der Spiegel recently:

"They did a lot wrong, but they also did a few things right. I wish I had the Taliban as my soldiers. I wish they were serving me and not people in Pakistan or others. When we came back to Afghanistan, the international community brought back all those people who had turned away from the Taliban ..."

"We wanted to arrest a really terrible warlord, but we couldn't do it because he is being protected by a particular country (Germany). We found out that he was being paid $30,000 a month to stay on his good side. They even used his soldiers as guards ....I don't want to name the country (Germany) because it will hurt a close friend and ally. But there are also many other countries who contract the Afghan militias and their leaders. So I can only work where I can act, and I must always calculate what will happen before doing anything."

There is plenty of blame to go around in allowing the Taliban to become powerful on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border. They have established themselves as an effective alternative to the age-old tribal elders jirga system. In fact, they have replaced the old system as defacto rulers capable of settling tribal disputes and managing the routine affairs normally reserved for the state. It is clear that the actions that enabled the Taliban to seize local tribal control and fund their insurgency are going to be recorded in history as the biggest mistake by US and NATO allies. Combine the strong funding with the extraordinary zeal of the Taliban and you have the most difficult situation that we see on the ground today. Just a "military surge" will not do the trick here. It'll require a multi-faceted carrots and sticks approach and tough decisions to change some of the bad choices made by the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan and NATO in Afghanistan.