Snow drifted across the sawtooth peaks of Tora Bora, the mountain redoubt where three years ago Osama bin Laden wriggled through an American dragnet as soldiers reached his secret cave complex.
Today, the al-Qaeda leader is on the run and his Taliban allies have scattered. But further down the wooded slopes a potent new threat to Afghanistan’s future is quietly pushing to the surface. Tens of thousands of tiny green poppies, sown in the winter soil last month, are growing fast. The innocent-looking plants are the raw material for a drugs boom that experts say could turn Afghanistan into a lawless narco-state.
Almost 90% of all heroin will come from Afghanistan this year, according to a United Nations report. The $2,8-billion trade accounts for 40% of the country’s economy, employs 10% of the population, and has fuelled the rise of drug lords who threaten to upend the fragile democratic transition. The province of Nangarhar, along the Pakistani border, is the heroin heartland. Here drug production is not limited to a criminal minority; it is a community endeavour. Four out of five families are involved in opium and the province grew 23% of the most recent national crop. The economics are simple, said Haji Silamer, a Pachir tribal leader: ”We grow a field of wheat and make $300. We grow opium, we earn $3 000.”
Tackling the trade is a priority for the newly inaugurated president, Hamid Karzai. Last month hundreds of tribal leaders gathered at his fortress-like palace to hear him make an impassioned appeal. Opium cultivation was a ”cancer”, even worse than the Soviet occupation, he said. ”Please stop this disgrace and dishonour. I want respect and honour for my country.”
Some are listening. Significant numbers of farmers in Nangarhar have spurned opium for wheat in some districts, said the deputy governor, Muhammad Asif Qazi Zada. Diplomats in Kabul have received reports of a similar drop in Hilmand, another top drugs province.
The claims can only be fully verified during April’s harvest. But in three areas visited by the Guardian, there was real evidence of change. In Pachir wa Agam, a few miles from the Pakistani border, Shah Wazir stood on a plot that was carpeted with poppies last year. Now there is wheat. ”When we voted for Karzai we promised to stop the poppy in return for irrigation and good roads,” he said. ”We are keeping our side of the bargain. Now he must keep his.”
Civic spirit is not the only factor in the change of heart in this remote district. Crop disease last year turned some farmers from opium. Others have been scared by a concerted anti-opium drive by the governor and provincial police chief. The area’s Pashtuns are also hoping international promises of help will finally come good.
The United States recently donated 500 tonnes of wheat seed, but after a sevenyear drought farmers say much more is needed. If new wells, roads and irrigation systems do not materialise soon, they would resort to their ”insurance policy”, said Silamer.
”If the government doesn’t keep its promises, we go back to poppy,” he said. The drug dealers are actually thought to favour a cut in production. This year’s bumper crop sent prices plunging and forced dealers to hoard their stocks. Now, thanks to the recent crackdown, prices have leaped fourfold and are still rising.
British-led efforts to scuttle the opium trade have been helped by a pledge of $780-million (£405-million) from the US. Mirwais Yasini, head of the Afghan government’s anti-drugs team, said a paramilitary antinarcotics force trained by SAS officers had destroyed 50 heroin laboratories and confiscated 60 tonnes of the drug since January. US officials are also training 15 judges to hear cases in a drugs court that is due to start work within weeks.
Some in the west favour aerial spraying of opium crops with herbicide, as has happened in anti-cocaine campaigns in Colombia. The idea makes Afghan officials and farmers livid.
Last month, Nangarhar residents said a mystery plane flew over at night, spraying their crops with small gray pellets. Mr Karzai summoned the British and American ambassadors for an explanation. Both denied any involvement.
”How can nobody know? No plane passes in this sky without coalition permission,” said Mr Silamer.
Farmers are an easy target, but smugglers further up the chain pose a thornier challenge, partly because many have close links with the administration. ”Some governors, police chiefs, even cabinet ministers — all of them are involved,” said one diplomat in Kabul.
More embarrassing for Mr Karzai are persistent allegations that his Kandahar-based brother Ahmed Wali Karzai — who helped finance his recent election campaign — is involved in the trade.
The former interior minister Taj Mohammad Wardak is among the accusers. ”There is no direct proof but everyone knows,” he told the Guardian. ”If you ask the people in the bazaar, four out of 10 will tell you that Karzai’s brother is exporting drugs.”
Mr Wardak was the running-mate of Yunus Qanooni, Mr Karzai’s main rival in the October election. Walid Karzai vehemently denies the allegations, and officials say they lack evidence. ”In the west people are very careful about defaming others. You have to have proof that is advisable in the courts,” said Mr Yasini.
The US military has strong links with regional governors, who help them to flush out the Taliban, but some of whom are also involved in drugs running. In some cases, the US pays the warlords’ soldiers to provide security escorts — soldiers who, villagers say, are involved in extortion, gunrunning and smuggling.
But there are warnings that tackling opium in Afghanistan may be even more difficult than the intervention in Columbia. Here, opium is not just part of the economy; aside from international aid and military spending, it is the economy.
Taxation, construction and the currency are all propped up — ”there is a product that keeps people afloat,” said Barnett Rubin of the New York-based Centre on International Cooperation, who carried out a recent study of the trade. ”It is one of the key reasons that Afghanistan is more stable than Iraq.” — Guardian Unlimited Â