The article says "Osama bin Laden is using cash from the Afghanistan heroin market to finance his life on the run".

There have been many conflicting stories here. Some say he cannot go anywhere because he has an iron lung, others that he is in Iran/Pakistan/Afganistan. Yet more rumors say that he is dead.

So, personally speaking I don't put much credence to this story in this context.

If fit enough to travel, Osama probably gets free passage due to his "hero" status together with promises of removal of the democratic process from Afganistan and pro-western governments within Arab lands.

I'm not sure that Osama has so much beef within Europe, as the turks in Germany, Arabs in France and Pakistanis in Britain play an ever increasingly important roles. Modern Mosques cater for the religious role while the younger muslims remain firmly as muslims, but the older ones take up roles such as town mayors, welfare workers.

I think Osama wants control of the Arab lands first , but with the US toying with democracy in Afganistan and Iraq, it is adding to an intriguing mix.

I don't doubt the drug trade issue though, with the US abondoning Afganistan before the Taliban had gone completely, regional warlords have taken root and stay rich (and armed) via this drug trade.

Much of this trade ends up back in the US, Canada and Britain, work must be done to ensure that the Afganis know that growing potatoes and mangoes/sugarcane/bananas are just as profitable as growing heroine. The Afganis too need to take their responsibilities seriously, but threats from bloody warlords don't help.

If this work is not completed you need to learn to say "can I have another Afgani fix" at the nite clubs or outside schools. It's as simple as that!

Posted by: Naseem at December 6, 2004 8:54 AM

Its quite true that drug money is financing a lot of jihadi activity, next only to oil money I guess.
From canada to bulgaria, the turks and Iranians and otehr muzzie groups have taken over the drug business. They were pretty well-placed to do so. The group that';s more bloodthirsty and willing to go farther than rivals wins in this business and quasi-jihadist organizations pretty much fit the bill.

As for the drug trade frm afghanistan, from what i hear, well connected pakistani generals are involved as well! At the corps commander level no less. Narco-ttrade also finances much of the nefarious activity of the paki ISI - such as its sponsoring of jihad in kashmir, bangladesh and afghanistan etc

Posted by: voletti at December 6, 2004 9:02 AM

Naseem:

Osama hates everyone who isn't as Wahhabi as he is, he just hates some more than others at a particular point in time, with, for example, Israel moving up and down from No. 3 to No. 4 on his list of "grievances". He is a sociopath, obsessed with a death cult vision of the world who aligned himself with sympathizers so full of hatred they had to destroy an ancient monument to another culture that once dominated Afghanistan.

Blame the US for "abandoning" Afghanistan if you wish, but what of the role played by western and Islamic nations that have stood by in silence while so many of your co-religionists suffered under unspeakably dispicable totalitarian regimes for the last 40 to 60 years? What could be more obscene than France, China and Russia helping Saddam to bilk the oil-for-food program so they could benefit, while opposing deposing him at the UN Security Council? Or Arafat coming to Saddam's defense because they formed a mutual admiration society, with Saddam giving money to Palestinian suicide bombers while he tortured and murderered Iraqis so he could be presented as a hero to the greater Muslim world, and Arafat funding the Al-Aqsa brigage of terrorists and other similar enterprises while publicly claiming that he was doing all he could to "crack down on militants".

The US hasn't been feckless in its attempts to introduce an alternative to the most severely totalitarian regimes of our times, but it's not entirely their fault that things are going so badly either. And you know full well the role Pakistan has played in events over the years, giving succour to Osama and others for a very long time until they were put on the spot.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at December 6, 2004 11:35 AM

ANOTHER VARIATION OF MUSLIM KILLING MUSLSIM
ISLAMIC drug that drove addict to kill
FROM C P IN QUETTA

SAKHI fidgeted nervously on the matted clinic floor, twisting his scarf in his hands. "I am desperate for some heroin," he said. "The urge is so strong it is hard to fight."

Unlike most other addicts here, the former opposition fighter did not take heroin of his own free will. "The Taleban gave it to me to make me fight against my friends, their enemies," he said.

"Now I am humiliated, I am locked in this clinic and it is all because of the Taleban."

Sakhi was fighting for the Northern Alliance when he was captured by the Taleban forces and taken to prison in Jalalabad. For Sakhi, a proud fighter, nicknamed Commander Crazy by his comrades, the confines of an enemy prison were hard to bear.

Already an habitual marijuana smoker, he begged his captors for supplies of the drug to ease the harshness of prison life. The guards refused and packed him off to the front line, promising that the Taleban commanders there would give him what he wanted.

The marijuana they gave him was unlike anything he had tried before. "When I smoked the hashish, it felt different in my body." he said. "It made me feel powerful and fearless."

Only later did Sakhi learn that the commanders had mixed heroin powder into his marijuana to spur him into fighting against his own army. By then he was addicted.

After smoking his daily dose of heroin he barely hesitated when asked to fight against his former friends in the Northern Alliance. "I felt the urge to kill even my comrades. I would do anything they wanted just for the drugs."

None of the Taleban took heroin but it was fed liberally to the opposition captives. Their addiction proved more effective than any prison bars. "I could have escaped and tried to make it back to the Northern Alliance, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get heroin there. So I was forced to stay with the Taleban," he said.

It was not hard for the Taleban to keep supplying Sakhi’s habit. For years, the regime has been heavily involved in the trafficking of more than 80 per cent of the world’s heroin. Taxes on opium crops provided much of the cash needed to buy weapons for their fight to control the whole of the country.

Production supposedly ground to a halt last year when the Taleban leader ordered an end to poppy cultivation on religious grounds. But insiders say the trade goes on and supplies are plentiful. "We stopped growing it when Mullah (Muhammad) Omar told us to but we had already 400kg of opium in our stockpiles," said Abdul Ahmed, 28, a farmer from Helmand.

He came here three weeks ago to overcome the addiction he developed at the age of ten when he sucked the juices from a poppy plant growing on his father’s farm.

Since the ban, opium growers like him have been slowly releasing their stocks on to the market, keeping prices buoyant. But last month the Taleban rescinded the ban on production, paving the way for a new opium crop to be planted.

Political uncertainty in the wake of the terrorist attacks in America has also brought a flood of cheap heroin on to the market as farmers offload their stocks in exchange for ready cash.
Dealers in Quetta say prices here have halved in the past two weeks, from 50,000 rupees (£570) a kilo to less than 25,000. Beneath the bridge over a stinking sewer where Quetta’s heroin addicts gather, a day’s supply can now be bought for less than 50p.

Those involved in the trade say it will not be long before the flood of cheap heroin reaches Europe, sending prices plummeting worldwide.

The Taleban have been happy to reap profit from the international trade in heroin but there are harsh punishments for Afghans caught using it without their permission.

After being discharged from the Taleban army on the grounds that he was no longer fit to fight, Sakhi was forced to undertake a dangerous daily pilgrimage to remote areas close to Pakistan to buy heroin away from prying eyes.

"My friend Hassan was caught bringing opium back from the border," he said. "They cut off four of his fingers then painted his face black and paraded him around town on the back of a donkey as a lesson to others."

Horrified by their son’s fate, Hassan’s parents took pity on Sakhi and gave him the money to come to the clinic in Quetta. Seven days into his treatment, he is determined to kick his habit and is already vowing revenge on the commanders who landed him here.

"I wish I had the manpower, 40 or 50 people, so we would go and fight the Taleban," he said, glancing around at the stupefied patients. "I want to kill them all for what they have done to me."

Mr Ahmed is also planning his return to Afghanistan, not to fight, but to plant his fields with opium poppies to replace the stunted wheat crops he had grown in their place. Despite the suffering caused by his addiction, he sees no shame in making his living from the misery of others.

"We have a tradition in Islam that if you are starving you can eat the meat of animals that is forbidden at other times," he said. "It is the same with the opium poppies. We are compelled to grow them because we are poor."

Posted by: shiva at December 6, 2004 1:01 PM

AND SOME A LITTLE MORE SCARY
Reproduced from the Jerusalem Report: October 25th, 1999
Master terrorist Ossame Bin Laden has acquired portable nuclear devices, a U.S.-based expert on non-conventional terror believes. The only real question now is whether BinLaden has "a few," as Russian intelligence seems to think, or "over 20," a figure cited by intelligence services of moderate Arab regimes. "There is no longer much doubt that Bin Laden has finally succeeded in his quest for nuclear ‘suitcase bombs," says Yossef Bodansky, head of the Congressional Task Force on Non-Conventional Terrorism in Washington. In a recent book, Bodansky reports that Bin Laden’s associates acquired the devices through Chechnya, paying the Chechens $30 million in cash and two tons of Afghan heroin, worth about $70 million in Afghanistan and about 10 times that on the street in Western cities.

Posted by: shiva at December 6, 2004 1:08 PM

SIX WORDS JUST SIX WORDS
Naseem [Apasmara Purusha]
Much of this trade ends up back in the US, Canada and Britain,and under your nose

Government of Pakistan Ministry of Narcotics Narcotics Control Division
Pakistan - A Victim, Not a Source Country
At the time of independence in 1947, Pakistan was deficient in opium as it could not meet the requirements of its own opium addicts, whose number at that time was fairly limited. Till 1956, the country imported opium from India. Thereafter, only the production of "licensed opium" for medical needs was permissible - that too in a few selected areas and under strict control. Even subsequently, the number of opium addicts in Pakistan never touched an alarming level.

The production of licensed opium continued till 1979 when two important developments took place. These were:

The Islamic revolution in Iran, February 1979.

Promulgation of the Prohibition Enforcement of Hadd Order 1979 in Pakistan, which led to a total ban on opium production. This left the farmers with huge stockpiles (approximately 800 tons) of poppy. They did not know what to do with that. In the meantime, some western experts taught Pakistani farmers the technique of converting poppy into heroin. This is how heroin, which was produced in Europe for the first time in 1898, was introduced to this part of the world in the 1980s.

Out of the cultivable land in Pakistan, opium production was confined to a few isolated pockets of FATA and NWFP only. By 1995, this area was further reduced to 5,215 hectares as compared to 32,000 hectares in 1978. Consequently, poppy production also declined from 800 to 109.5 metric tons during the same period. In its annual reports for the years 2000 and 2001, UNDCP has declared Pakistan a 'poppy-free' country. Pakistan's efforts in this connection have been duly appreciated, so much so that it is being regarded as a role model in the region.

The anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan and Pakistan's porous borders with that country resulted in the spread of the narco gun culture. With almost no heroin addicts in 1979, Pakistan is now reeling under the ill effects of the highest addiction rate in the world as pointed out by UNDCP official Thomas Zeiendl Cronin, on the occasion of the launching of the INCB Report 2001. He further categorized Pakistan as an important transit country for opiates and hashish in the region.

The present position is that Pakistan still has to import heroin to the extent of 80 to 106 metric tons or between 800 to 1,066 metric tons of poppy to meet the requirements of its own drug addicts. It is, therefore, incorrect to designate Pakistan as a source country. As a matter of fact, we are a victim country because from almost zero level of heroin addicts, Pakistan now has to cater for 500,000 heroin addicts.

For the fourth consecutive year in 2001, the US has, under Section 490 (b) (1) (A) of the USA Foreign Assistance Act 1961, issued full certification to the government of Pakistan for fully complying with the requirements of the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Trafficking in Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances 1988.
AND
In Karachi, Pakistan, they are called the `living dead'; scavenging for food in the dirtiest of the open garbage heaps, or squatting cock-style in rows in front of cheap hotels in congested market places just in case a customer buys them a free meal. They can be seen sitting in groups on pavements, or even inside the manholes of the underground drainage lines, inhaling the lethal whitish fumes. They are called heroinchis, or heroin addicts, easily identified because of their dirty shalwar-kamiz (baggy Pakistani shirts and trousers), unshaven faces, the lost gaze in their eyes and the pale colour of their skin.

`Between themselves these two million heroin addicts puff away 130 metric tons of the deadly white powder each year,' says Pakistani psychiatrist Dr Saleem Azam. The last national survey showed that the number of heroin addicts had grown seven per cent per year between 1988 and 1993, and Dr Azam conservatively estimates the same growth rate from 1993 onwards. In reality, this translates into 16 new heroin addicts each hour.

A significant percentage of the heroin addicts are street dwellers, and at least ten per cent of such addicts are children. Entire families are vulnerable to the deadly addiction in Pakistan today -- already eight per cent of the total heroin addicts are women.

There is a diabolical link between heroin addiction and peddling. A study showed that 76 per cent of all heroin addicts retail the drug to support their addiction. `The addict buys an extra packet for 50 rupees and sells it for 75 rupees ($1.5), earning half the money for the next packet for himself,' Dr Azam says.

Curing the addicts and bringing them back to sobriety may remain an elusive dream. Detoxification takes about 15 days and is done in centres where the addicts are kept locked up. The cost of the treatment is at least $10 per day, which means that in a country where the average per capita income is $483 a year, nearly 99 per cent of the addicts cannot afford to come to these centres.

There are five rehabilitation centres of any repute for heroin addicts throughout Pakistan which in total can handle fewer than 3,000 patients at a time. Those who run the centres concede that less than five per cent of all who come quit the drug for good, while 95 per cent get hooked again.

In most cases, heroin is sold in Pakistani cities under the watchful eyes of the police, who have a stake in the local drug trade. In Karachi's oldest shanty area of Lyari, drug peddling is a thriving business and continues in the presence of the police, who also seldom intervene in gunfights between rival drug gangs.

Public opinion is unanimous in blaming the military junta that ruled Pakistan during the 1980s for the heroin curse. During the bloody communists-versus-Mujahideen war in Afghanistan -- the former helped by the erstwhile Red Army and the latter aided by the American CIA -- the West looked the other way while heroin addiction made inroads in Pakistani society. It is an open secret that the Afghan Mujahideen transported the first consignments of the deadly powder to Pakistan in the early 1980s when Afghanistan was under Russian occupation.

Hope is fast fading that the war against heroin, even if started in real earnest, can ever be won. Afghanistan produced over 3,200 tons of opium in 1998 -- up by 16 per cent from the year before -- and the area under cultivation rose to around 64,000 hectares in 1998, an increase of nine per cent as compared to 1997. The ruling Taliba'an sees no evil in poppy cultivation, arguing that Islam allows doing forbidden things when human lives are under threat.

Reports say lush green poppy fields can be seen in Afghanistan's Kandahar valley, once a store of apples, grapes and other fruits. The apple production in this area before the war (which began in 1979) was so huge that villagers even used the fruit to clean themselves after attending to a call of nature. But now it is the poppy that is the most favoured cash crop -- one kilogram of poppy fetches the farmer around $50. The farmers say that no one in their right mind would replace poppy with wheat, which would sell for less than a dollar.

Commanders of assorted factions of the Mujahideen groups, notably the ruling Taliba'an, hold a big stake in heroin smuggling. `Armed to the teeth, the smugglers move in convoys of the latest model four-wheel vehicles, fitted with state-of-the-art communication equipment. When we see them coming our way, we have to make way for them,` says a major in the Pakistan army's Frontier Corps, that guards the borders with Iran and Afghanistan. In Iran, the carriers get paid in bag-loads of dollars and the heroin is then transported in other vehicles to Turkey and from there smuggled across Western Europe. Other convoys snake through smuggling routes in Pakistan's southwest and reach Karachi. A part of the heroin is consumed locally here and the rest is shipped to Europe via East African ports and the free port of Dubai in the Gulf.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

Posted by: shiva at December 6, 2004 2:41 PM

I found a news item on a Russian news site (English language)some weeks ago that claimed that autopsies of the child murderers of Beslan showed that they were habitual users of and operating under the influence of a hitherto unknown (unknown to that lab at least) heroin/opium derivative drug. Did anyone else see anything on the subject and does anyone else know any more?

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at December 6, 2004 3:35 PM

al sader was useing the drug?? Most of the Terrorist in Iraq are all doped up??

So drug use does help the MONSTERS WHO CUT MENS HEADS OFF??

Part of the American Tribe
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Sight,Wisdom, and Courage to stay the course to Victroy[FREEDOM] to Destroy ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL wh Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Threat Amen

Posted by: Catherine at December 6, 2004 7:03 PM

Naseem said:

"...with the US abandoning Afganistan before the Taliban had gone completely, regional warlords have taken root and stay rich (and armed) via this drug trade."

It's amazing the evils the US perpetrates on helpless, blameless muslims. Naseem's statement implies that the US caused the drug problem in Afghan. Opium has been 60% of GNP for decades. If the US stays to help vs commies, they are oppressing. If they leave when commies gone, they are abandoning. If they strike back at OBL after 9/11, they are attacking an ex-comrade (who's shown himself to be a long-term friend). Drink wine, no that's evil. Send the poison heroin around the world, now that makes allah smile. After all, it's not as though it's hurting HUMANS (ie. muslims).

Posted by: CornHolio at December 6, 2004 7:55 PM

Actually, using narcotics to finance guerrilla wars is an old established practice. Some in China say that the late Marshall Ye Jianning was in charge of the Communists' opium business when they were still a guerrilla movement in China. Most of the Burmese rebel groups are notorious for opium trafficking. For a while, Soviet support allowed some Communist guerrilla movements to be a bit "cleaner".

Further, upland populations in many places have histories of substance abuse to ease the hardships of their lives. Coca in the Andes and opium all along the mountain chains from Anatolia to Indochina are perhaps the best examples--to say nothing of "corn squeezin's" in Appalachia.

My own feeling is that decriminalization would probably make the poppy and coca nothing but minor adjuncts to subsistence farming. In Afghanistan, it might even encourage farmers to grow and dry apricots if the price of opium were to collapse.

Posted by: Kepha1 at December 6, 2004 11:18 PM