Pakistan and the United States have been trading accusations about who’s responsible for the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan. Yet as they bicker, both countries are ignoring one important consequence of the Taliban takeover: the coming boom in Afghanistan’s narcotic trade, which presents a major threat to global health. In the next few years, a flood of drugs from Afghanistan may become a bigger threat than terrorism.
The 20-year-long U.S. intervention failed to dismantle the narco-economy, which was the biggest source of funding for the insurgents. The Taliban has never made any mystery about its friendly relations with some well-known Afghan drug lords.… Seguir leyendo »
On 21 November, the U.S. military began major airstrikes against what it described as Taliban drug labs in the north of Helmand province of Afghanistan. Yet a coercive counter-narcotics campaign will solve neither the country’s poppy boom nor the Taliban’s profiting from it, which has long depended to an extraordinary extent on very local dynamics.
It is no secret that the Taliban bankrolls its operations in part by drug money, with estimates of its annual share of the multi-billion-dollar illicit drug economy ranging from tens to a few hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars. The staggering 87 per cent increase in Afghanistan’s opium production in 2017, as reported by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) this month, also means more profits for the Taliban.… Seguir leyendo »
When Tony Blair deployed British troops in Afghanistan, ending the illicit production and supply of opium was cited as a key objective. In 2001 the prime minister linked heroin use in the UK with opium cultivation in Afghanistan: "The arms the Taliban buy are paid for by the lives of young British people buying their drugs. This is another part of the regime we should destroy." Yet after 10 years of effort with tens of thousands of troops in the country, and having spent billions trying to reduce poppy cultivation, Afghans are growing more opium than ever before.
As the December US troop draw-down deadline approaches, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime estimates that last year Afghanistan produced nearly $3bn worth of opium, and its derivatives heroin and morphine.… Seguir leyendo »
Cinco soldados ingleses mueren en Afganistán a manos de un policía local a plena luz del día, a poca distancia de su cuartel. El asesino era un infiltrado a sueldo de los narco-talibanes, el nuevo Ejército informal afgano que está poniendo de rodillas al super-tecnológico Ejército estadounidense y a todos sus aliados. Se trata de un guión tristemente conocido, que se interpreta desde hace años al otro lado del mundo, en Colombia, donde la joint-venture entre los barones de la cocaína y las FARC ha convertido gran parte del país en un narco-archipiélago. Ni las intervenciones del Ejército, ni la forzada erradicación de los cultivos de coca, ni el uso de la diplomacia, ni hasta la concesión de una tajada del país -el Despeje- a las FARC a cambio del alto el fuego; ninguna de estas estrategias ha hecho mella en la industria de los narcóticos.… Seguir leyendo »
La guerra de Irak pasará a la historia como el conflicto que puso de rodillas a la presidencia de Bush, mientras que el de Afganistán podría resultar ser la cáscara de plátano de Obama. Pero el enemigo del nuevo presidente de Estados Unidos se asemeja cada vez menos al del anterior; durante el año último las dinámicas del conflicto afgano han adquirido aspectos preocupantes, distintos de los iraquíes.
Un informe presentado a principios de septiembre al Congreso norteamericano advierte de que Afganistán podría convertirse en un narco-Estado. La dirección de esa metamorfosis está a cargo del poderosísimo cártel del opio, compuesto por antiguos señores de la guerra y por grupos criminales nacidos al día siguiente de la invasión del país hace ya ocho años.… Seguir leyendo »
Tema: La producción, procesamiento y tráfico del opio afgano afecta de forma cada vez más grave a los esfuerzos afganos e internacionales por dar seguridad y desarrollo a la población de Afganistán.
Resumen: Uno de los problemas más graves a los que se tiene que enfrentar el gobierno de Afganistán, y para el que necesita de todo el apoyo posible de la Comunidad Internacional, es el de la droga. Este sector desvía fuera del presupuesto del Estado más de la mitad del PIB real, en un país donde las fuentes de ingresos son escasas y los narcotraficantes, los “señores” de la guerra, los grupos insurgentes y los agricultores compiten o cooperan para repartirse sus beneficios y coaccionar a quienes tratan de restarles ingresos.… Seguir leyendo »
A skinny man opened the gate at the sprawling compound in Quetta, in western Pakistan. When I asked if the property belonged to Afghanistan’s most powerful drug smuggler, he smiled and nodded. “Haji Juma Khan has 200 houses,” he said. “And this is one of them.”
I had been trying to track down Mr. Khan for years when I found this residence on a dusty, garbage-strewn alley. It hardly seemed an auspicious address for a man who American officials say moved as much as $1 billion worth of opium every year, hiring the Taliban to protect his colossal narcotics shipments and paying corrupt officials in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to look the other way.… Seguir leyendo »
"I'm a spray man myself," President Bush told government leaders and American counter-narcotics officials during his 2006 trip to Afghanistan. He said it again when President Hamid Karzai visited Camp David in August. Bush meant, of course, that he favors aerial eradication of poppy fields in Afghanistan, which supplies over 90 percent of the world's heroin. His remarks -- which, despite their flippant nature, were definitely not meant as a joke -- are part of the story behind the spectacularly unsuccessful U.S. counter-narcotics program in Afghanistan. Karzai and much of the international community in Kabul have warned Bush that aerial spraying would create a backlash against the government and the Americans, and serve as a recruitment device for the Taliban while doing nothing to reduce the drug trade.… Seguir leyendo »
The power to destroy does not carry within it the power to control. A century of failed colonial rule and the American misadventure in Vietnam etched that lesson on global consciousness for a time. It has taken the huge problems that affluent, nuclear-armed nations are encountering in the miserable ruins of Afghanistan and Iraq to drive it home anew.
Call it the paradox of overwhelming but insufficient force. It is surfacing in a struggle in Afghanistan over the wisdom of chemically eradicating that nation's expanding poppy fields. They are the source of (1) the livelihoods of many Afghan peasants, (2) a record flood of heroin into Western markets and (3) funding for the Taliban and other terrorist forces.… Seguir leyendo »
This week's alarming UN reports on the Afghan opium crop, showing that it now accounts for over 93% of global illicit production, prompted much debate. A Guardian leader (The drugs don't work, August 27) acknowledged the futility of eradication efforts, but gave qualified support to the Senlis Council plan to pilot the licensing of Afghan opium production for medical use.Superficially, the idea has great appeal, potentially helping Afghanistan toward political stability and filling the apparent shortfall in medical opiates. Yet the Senlis vision is both ill-conceived and impractical.
As other experts identified in another article (Eradication or legalisation?, August 29) the plan faces a raft of political and practical problems relating to Afghanistan's chaotic status as a failed state and war zone.… Seguir leyendo »
By Ricard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He writes a monthly column for The Post (THE WASHINGTON POST, 02/04/06):
KABUL, Afghanistan -- In a region of Pakistan almost unknown to most Americans, a sort of failed ministate offering sanctuary to our greatest enemies has arisen. It is a smaller version of what Afghanistan was before Sept. 11, 2001, and it poses a direct threat to vital American national security interests.
Waziristan and North-West Frontier Province, where Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar are hiding, have become a major sanctuary in which the Taliban and al-Qaeda train, recruit, rest and prepare for the next attacks on U.S.,… Seguir leyendo »
Utilizamos cookies para el correcto funcionamiento de la página web y analíticas para estadísticas.ACEPTARPolítica de privacidad
