Opium flows through Pakistan, funds Al Qaeda: US expert

By IANS

New York : Pakistan has emerged as a major transit point for opium smuggling from Afghanistan and the illicit trade is funding Al Qaeda, insists a US expert on drugs.


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“By neglecting to block the drugs, Pakistan and we are funding our worst enemy, who showed on 9/11 that they want us dead,” wrote Robert Weiner, a former drug policy spokesman for the White House, in an op-ed piece in Miami Herald Monday.

Afghanistan supplies 92 percent of the world’s heroin-producing opium, and Pakistan now transports 36 percent of Afghanistan’s illicit opium, Weiner and co-author John Larmett, a foreign affairs expert, said in the article.

“Afghanistan and Pakistan are the number one export and transit nations in the world for opium used for heroin. Opium production, on our watch, has increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 to over 6,000 tons in 2006,” the article said.

The article went on to refer to the resurgence of the Taliban being closely linked to the opium industry, adding, “The Taliban generates roughly 70 percent of its income through the production and sale of opium.”

Yet, Weiner and Larmett argued, “the US military presence, afraid to disrupt supposedly US-friendly Afghanistan and Pakistan’s economies, has maintained a blind eye rather than eradicate the drug trade.”

“Far from blocking drug trafficking, the government of Pakistan has negotiated a truce with rebels in northwestern Pakistan, with ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, providing carte blanche to grow, transport, and get huge money from the illicit crop,” they maintained.

In conclusion, the authors suggested, “Our military should be helping theirs to fight drugs. There must be bolder surveillance and eradication of poppy fields, stronger enforcement of cross-border anti-smuggling measures, and bank funding freezes of traffickers’ finances.”

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