America's Friends The Afghan Drug Lords

By Steve Hynd

Last week, Michael Cohen was astounded by the news that 50 Afghan drug traffickers believed to have ties to the Taliban were being put on a U.S. military hit list. He wrote:

You want to know how messed up this idea is: even Andrew Exum agrees with me!

Are we really going to spend our time, money and precious ISR assets going after the Pashtun Pablo Escobar? Again, why are we in Afghanistan? To fight drugs?

Here's the thing: if we're out there killing drug dealers in Afghanistan that's the practical definition of mission creep. What's next, are we going to start trying to convince farmers to grow something other than opium . . . oh jeez.

But it gets worse. Congress heard this month that the Taliban only gets a measly $70 million a year from the Afghan opium industry, not the $400 million that had been touted. And "there is no evidence that any significant amount of the drug proceeds go to Al Qaeda."

But the Afghan drug industry is estimated to have brought in over $3 billion a year, of which 80% ends up in drug lords' pockets and the rest pays farmers for growing the stuff.

So if the Taliban are only getting 7% of the cream, and Al Qaeda's getting none - who is getting the lion's share? Well...

In one of its most disconcerting conclusions, the Senate report says the United States inadvertently contributed to the resurgent drug trade ... by backing warlords who derived income from the flow of illegal drugs. ... These warlords later traded on their stature as U.S. allies to take senior positions in the new Afghan government, laying the groundwork for the corrupt nexus between drugs and authority that pervades the power structure today.

So what the U.S. hit list will actually do is eliminate some of the competition for our friends the Afghan drug lords. Meanwhile, the program is a propaganda gift to the Taliban.

The cost of this may well go beyond the effect on the heroin shipments.

When we sat down this week with Amin Tarzi, director of Middle East Studies at the Marine Corps University and a native Afghan, he said that the United States has lost credibility with the Afghan populace by allying itself with warlords who have been known across Afghanistan for many years as criminals. We have, he says, handed a golden issue to the Taliban. They first took power in the 1990's by charging that the existing government was corrupt. Now they can say it again.

Insanity.