Is Afghanistan's Drug Trade Paying Al Qaeda?

Sept. 19, 2002 — -- Afghanistan's vaunted heroin trade is back — and many of its proceeds are going to likely terror supporters as well as members of the incumbent government, experts told ABCNEWS.

This month, the United Nations' Office of Drug Control Policy said in a report that preliminary surveys had confirmed "a major resurgence" of opium poppy cultivation in the Central Asian country.

"It could be considerably high and considerably serious," said UNODCP spokesman Kemal Kurspahic. "We can assume that Afghanistan will resume its No. 1 spot at the production table."

Afghanistan is at the center of what's known as the Golden Crescent — a Central Asian version of Southeast Asia's infamous drug-supplying Golden Triangle.

For years, it was the world's largest producer of the opium poppy, the raw material for heroin. However, the country's notoriety exploded in the late 1990s, when the ruling Taliban regime levied taxes on the illicit harvest: a 10 percent tax on all production and 20 percent tax on trade. Some reports said authorities even issued receipts.

According to DEA estimates, Afghanistan shipped at least 2,000 metric tons of heroin in 2001. With heroin selling for prices ranging from $50 per kilo to $600 per kilo, that's at least $100 million or as much as $1.2 billion.

It was hoped that the ouster of the fundamentalist Islamic regime would end this illicit trade.

On the contrary, little has changed aside from the fact that Taliban tax collectors are no longer around. Those profiting from Afghanistan's post-Taliban heroin market are the same ones that profited during the Taliban reign.

Those that are making money are, in the words of Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin, "the same as they always were."

Haji Bashir was once a major Taliban money supplier and leading drug kingpin of southern Afghanistan.

Today, Bashir has dropped all ties to the former regime and become a "fine, upstanding citizen," said Rubin, director of New York University's Center on International Cooperation. But when asked if he thought Bashir was still involved in the drug trade, Rubin replied "probably."