From an article in Thursday’s Reformer:
WASHINGTON -- The State Department’s internal watchdog on Wednesday criticized the agency’s nearly $2 billion anti-drug effort in Afghanistan for poor oversight and lack of a long-term strategy.
In the article, the author suggests that the opium trade is the vehicle that supports the insurgency, Nothing could be further from the truth.
The total revenue generated by opiates within Afghanistan is about $3.4 billion per year. Of this figure, according to UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime ), the Taliban get only 4% of the sum. Farmers, meanwhile, get 21%.
And the remaining 75%? Al-Qaeda? No: The report specifies that it "does not appear to have a direct role in the Afghan opiates trade," although it may participate in "low-level drugs and/or arms smuggling" along the Pakistani border.
Instead, the remaining 75% is captured by government officials, the police, local and regional power brokers and traffickers - in short, many of the groups now supported (or tolerated) by the United States and NATO are important actors in the drug trade.
Truncated, for the complete article, see: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KL16Df01.html
And nobody is mentioning the role of the CIA, Xe (Nee Blackwater) and the giant international banks. (Yes, the same guys who brought you the meltdown and subsequent bailout). They are the ones laundering the profits. Nobody else has the ability to do so.