Word: talibans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...That decision has come back to haunt the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. Western intelligence agencies believe that Khan has become the kingpin of a heroin-trafficking enterprise that is a principal source of funding for the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. According to a Western antinarcotics official, since slipping out of Afghanistan after U.S. forces released him, Khan has helped al-Qaeda establish a smuggling network that is peddling Afghan heroin to buyers across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and in turn is using the drug revenues to purchase weapons and explosives. A Western law-enforcement official...
...emergence of Khan's network reflects the challenges the U.S. still faces in Afghanistan. Since ousting the Taliban in December 2001, the U.S. has struggled to hunt down al-Qaeda's leaders, disarm Afghanistan's warlords and shore up President Hamid Karzai against a revived Taliban-led insurgency. The renewed trade in opium has worsened all those problems. A recent World Bank report calculates that more than half of the country's economy is tied up in drugs. The combined income of farmers and in-country traffickers reached $2.23 billion last year?up from $1.3 billion in 2002. Heroin trafficking...
...Qaeda's foray into drugs dates from the days when the Taliban ruled the country. Though most devout Muslims consider narcotics taboo, bin Laden never directly condemned drug sales. A Western antinarcotics official says that in early 2001 al-Qaeda's financial experts joined forces with Khan and other alleged top Afghan drug traffickers to persuade Taliban leader Omar to ban opium cultivation. The ban was self-serving: it drove up opium prices from $30 per kilogram to nearly $650. That meant huge profits for the Taliban and their trafficker friends who were sitting on large stockpiles when prices soared...
...Neither the Taliban nor al-Qaeda actually grows opium poppy. Their involvement is higher up the drug chain, where profits are fatter and so is their cut of the deal. Yasini, the Afghan antidrug czar, says the terrorists receive a share of profits from heroin sales by supplying gunmen to protect labs and convoys. Recent busts have revealed evidence of al-Qaeda's ties to the trade. On New Year's Eve, a U.S. Navy vessel in the Arabian Sea stopped a small fishing boat that was carrying no fish. After a search, says a Western antinarcotics official, "they found...
...Harold D. ("Doug") Wankel to lead an intensified drive to nail kingpins, shut down heroin-production labs, eradicate poppy fields and persuade farmers to plant food crops. If the drug cartels aren't stopped, the U.S. fears, they could sow more chaos in Afghanistan, which al-Qaeda and the Taliban could exploit to wrest back power. "We need to make a difference in the next couple of years," says Wankel. Miwa Kato, a Kabul-based officer for the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime, puts it this way: "The opium problem has the capacity to undo everything that...