our new allies & the War on Drugs

[Doug Millison]

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/05/international/asia/05DRUG.html

excerpts:
"New data collected by the United Nations indicates that most opium grown
in Afghanistan this year was in areas controlled by the Northern Alliance,
a rebel group now being courted by the United States and its Western allies
as a means to destabilizing and even toppling the ruling Taliban.

The United Nations study confirmed earlier findings by United Nations
officials and United States narcotics experts that opium harvests in areas
controlled by the Taliban - said by the United Nations to be about 90
percent of Afghanistan - have plummeted after a recent Taliban ban on the
growing of opium poppies. Opium is used to produce heroin and other
narcotics. The new data, which United Nations officials expect to issue
shortly, is coming to light as government officials in the United States
and Europe have emphasized the role of the Taliban in purveying Afghan
opium and heroin.

Yesterday, for example, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, in a paper
that fixed responsibility for last month's terrorist attacks on the network
headed by Osama bin Laden, noted that both Mr. bin Laden and the Taliban
"jointly exploited the drugs trade."

United Nations narcotics experts have estimated that the Taliban have
earned $10 million to $30 million a year from taxes levied on opium
growers, while United States government officials more recently gave higher
estimates of $40 million to $50 million. The extent of Northern Alliance
earnings from opium cultivation is not clear, the United Nations experts
said. [...] The new data was assembled by the United Nations Office for
Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna.

In a telephone interview yesterday, Pino Arlacchi, the office's director,
said that production of opium poppies in Afghanistan, a country that until
recently had accounted for 71 percent of the world's supply, had plummeted
by 91 percent this year. [...]"