The strong link between U.S. military and covert intervention and drug trafficking continues in Afghanistan today. When it invaded and occupied the country in October 2001, Washington replaced the ruling Taliban with President Hamid Karzai and the Northern Alliance, a group of warlords whose armies are financed by drug trafficking. Since then opium production in Afghanistan has sky-rocketed and become the main economic activity in the country. Washington has been collaborating with narco-traffickers in its wars since 1943. These have included the Sicilian and Corsican Mafias, the Kuomintang in Burma, the Hmong in Laos, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan (1979-89) and the Contras in Nicaragua (1).

Poppy Explosion

Today Afghanistan provides 75% of the world's opium and is the leading global producer of both opium and heroin (2). According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) poppy is being planted in an unprecedented 28 out of 32 Afghan provinces (up from 18 in 1999). In 2003, opium farming and trafficking brought $2.3 billion to the country (more than double the amount received in reconstruction aid) and constituted half the economy. "Out of this drug chest, some provincial administrators and military commanders take a considerable share," said Antonio Maria Costa, the UNODC's director, "Terrorists take a cut as well. The longer this happens, the greater the threat to security within the country and on its borders." According to Costa, Afghanistan risked coming under the control of "drug cartels or narco-terrorists." President Karzai agrees saying "Drugs in Afghanistan are threatening the very existence of the Afghan state." Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan finance Minister, has warned that the country could easily become a "narco-mafia state." (3) Afghanistan provides about 90 per cent of Western Europe's supply of heroin (4), and over 80% of that used in Russia and Central Asia. In contrast, less than 5% of heroin in the U.S. comes from Afghanistan. Up to 50 per cent of the Afghan population is "believed to be directly or indirectly reliant on the trade for their livelihoods" (5).

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy announced in November 2003 that opium cultivation in Afghanistan doubled between 2002 (30,700 hectares)and 2003 (61,000 hectares). The White House figures are lower than those of the U.N. which estimates that poppy cultivation rose eight percent in 2003, to 80,000 hectares from 74,000 hectares in 2002. The two agencies used different methods according to the White House. The U.S. estimated that Afghanistan's opium production for 2003 would be 2,865 metric tons while the U.N. said it would increase by 6% to 3,600 metric tons (6). The Taliban benefited from opium cultivation during 1996-99 but banned it in 2000 to gain international recognition. The ban was extremely effective cutting poppy-growing by 95%; only 1,685 hectares were devoted to poppies in 2001 which produced 185 metric tons of opium (7). Most of the opium-growing area at this time was under the control of the Northern Alliance which was fighting the Taliban (8). The Alliance controlled about 10% of Afghan territory before the U.S. invasion (9). According to the White House, the massive rise in poppy growing was explained by the fact that "A challenging security situation ... has complicated significantly the task of implementing counternarcotics assistance programs and will continue to do so for the immediate future. Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is a major and growing problem. Drug cultivation and trafficking are undermining the rule of law and putting money in the pocket of terrorists" (10).

Heroin Strategy

The "challenging security situation" is a result of the Bush Administration's decision to use the Northern Alliance's opium-backed warlords to run Afghanistan. From the outset, the warlords have played a central role in U.S. military strategy in the country. Wishing to avoid ground combat and resultant casualties, the U.S. fought the Taliban largely through aerial bombing, committing only 10,000 ground troops (1,500 troops from other countries accompany U.S. ones while the NATO-led 5,700 member International Security Assistance Force guards Kabul) (11). Rather than bear the burden of a large occupying force, Washington used the warlords to take over and rule Taliban territory. Today it depends on these same forces to control the country, support the Karzai government and launch military operations against a resurgent Taliban. It is this U.S. security arrangement that heroin is financing and so it is not surprising that Washington has allowed opium production to mushroom since 2001. The main warlords are Mohammed Qasim Fahim in Kabul (leader of the Northern Alliance) Gul Agha Sherzai who rules Kandahar province, Hazrat Ali who rules Nangarhar province, Ismail Khan in Herat and Abdul Rashid Dostum in Mazar-i-Sharif. Together they command about 200,000 armed militia. President Hamid Karzai is known as the "mayor of Kabul" by its residents. Lacking an army of his own and protected by U.S. bodyguards, he is little more than a figurehead whose "writ barely runs in the country."(Karzai has banned opium production and trade to little effect) (12).

The warlords the U.S. is backing today are the same ones it supported against the Soviets in Afghanistan during 1979-1989. With U.S. complicity, these men were heavily involved in heroin trafficking at that time as well (13). After the departure of Soviet forces in 1989 and the collapse of the pro-Moscow Afghan regime in 1992, these warlords (known as Mujahideen then) terrorized Afghanistan for four years with factional fighting, massacres, rape and pillage. Under the command of Fahim's predecessor, Ahmed Shah Masood, the Northern Alliance fought against Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, another U.S.-backed warlord, for control of Kabul. The conflict killed 50,000 people in Kabul and destroyed the city. Such mayhem gave rise to the Taliban who drove the Northern Alliance out of Kabul in 1996 (14).

Bush's return to a narco-warlord strategy has been criticized by military experts, CIA officials, Congressional leaders and the British. According to author Seymour Hersh, "A devastating critique of the Administration's strategy" has come from inside the Pentagon itself. An internal military analysis of its Afghan war commissioned by the Defense Department's Office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC) concludes that the conflict has created conditions that have given "warlordism, banditry and opium production a new lease on life." The report was written by Hy Rothstein, a retired Army Colonel and a leading military expert in unconventional warfare who delivered the document to SOLIC in January 2004. Rothstein points out that bombing was not the best way to find al-Qaeda leaders and that there was "a failure to translate early tactical successes into strategic victory." According to him, "the victory in Afghanistan was not, in the long run, a victory at all." The Pentagon's response was to ask Rothstein to substantially reduce his report and "soften his conclusions" (15).

Hersh also quotes Milton Bearden, who directed the CIA's covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan: "[The warlords] Fahim and Dostum are part of the problem, and not the solution; these people have the clever gene and they can get us to do their fighting for them. They just lead us down the path. How wonderful for them to have us knock off their opposition with American airplanes..." Significantly, Hersh adds: "The easy availability of heroin also represents a threat to the well-being of American troops. Since the fall of 2002, a number of active-duty and retired military and CIA. officials have told me about increasing reports of heroin use by American military personnel in Afghanistan, many of whom have been there for months, with few distractions" (16).

Further disapproval of the Bush strategy came at a Senate hearing in May 2003 where the administration faced charges that it was allowing Afghan drug production to boom. Critics declared that the administration has ignored the incredible increase in Afghan opium production, either because " it cannot control the countryside or because it does not want to undermine regional warlords who profit from the trade and are fighting America's proxy war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban." "This is just outrageous," said Larry Johnson, a former State Department and CIA official who is now a consultant to government and business on terrorism and narcotics. "If any other country was in the position we are and allowing this to happen, we would accuse them of being complicit in the drug trade. The Bush administration is showing benign neglect." Senator Joseph Biden (Democrat-Delaware) displayed outrage over the administration's "apparent toleration of Afghan drug production," at the judiciary committee hearings on links between international drug trafficking and terrorism held in May. "...Afghanistan has now regained its status as the world's largest source of opium," Biden said to the committee, "We can't separate fighting terrorism and fighting drug trafficking, given the considerable linkages between the two." "Afghanistan is the No. 1 opium producer again, this time on our watch," a Biden aide added (17).

Similar rebuke has come from Britain, the U.S.' main Western ally in Afghanistan. According to The Guardian (U.K.) "Whitehall officials privately accuse the U.S. of giving a low priority to the [opium] issue, as it needs the warlords to help combat Taliban and al-Qaida remnants and other Islamist fighters." Ninety-percent of Britain's heroin comes Afghanistan (18).

According to Alfred McCoy, author of the definitive book The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade and a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, "Heroin trafficking in Afghanistan is the result of two CIA covert wars fought there, one during 1979-89 and the other since 2001. Under a covert warfare doctrine first developed in Laos during the 1960s, Washington fought this war [against the Taliban] by deploying massive air power, CIA cash, and Special Forces as advisers to Afghan warlords. You have a contradiction in the U.S. policy in Afghanistan. You have U.S. forces chasing the Taliban and al-Qaeda with the warlords-cum-drug lords and you have an effort to build a central government ... So you won't see much U.S. support for the official eradication policy of Karzai because we are in bed with the warlords. Also, Afghanistan is a monocrop economy. Opium is its only lucrative crop. If the U.S. stopped heroin trafficking the economy would implode. Thirdly, the U.S. has no intention of committing billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to Afghanistan. In this situation, opium is the ideal drug for Afghan reconstruction as it is labour-intensive and needs little water in a country beset by massive unemployment and an arid climate." Larry Johnson, the ex-CIA official agrees saying, "The drug users will help rebuild Afghanistan" (19).

Narco-State

Opium production was one incentive the U.S. gave the warlords in order to create its security arrangement. The others were massive bribes and control of the government. As one observer describes it "the CIA simply handed suitcases of cash to warlords around the country" during the war against the Taliban. According to McCoy, the agency spent $70 million on "direct cash outlays on the ground in Afghanistan." President Bush called this one of history's biggest "bargains" and his cabinet joked that "you can't buy an Afghan but you can rent one." The CIA's bribes included $10 million paid to Northern Alliance warlords. In February, 2002, The Washington Times reported that the U.S. gave dozens of Afghan warlords U.S.$200,000 each and satellite phones for their allegiance. Thirty-five warlords were given a total of $7 million. One of these was Mirza Mohammed Nassery, who "defected from the Taliban and served as a commander with the Pir Gillani group in the hotly contested city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan" (20). In July 2002, The Observer (U.K.) "learnt that 'bin bags' full of U.S. dollars have been flown into Afghanistan, sometimes on Royal Air Force planes, to be given to key regional power brokers who could cause trouble for Hamid Karzai's administration" (21). The Observer also reported in 2002 that to prevent rebellion against the weak Karzai government, Hazrat Ali and Gul Agha Sherzai, (both "drug-tainted warlords") along with other warlords, "have been 'bought off' with millions of dollars in deals brokered by U.S. and British intelligence" (22).

Official posts were a third way for the U.S. to retain the loyalty of Northern Alliance warlords (23). They were given all four of the new government's most important ministries: defense, interior, intelligence and foreign affairs (24). As a result, the state is largely run by drug traffickers. Northern Alliance leader Mohammed Qasim Fahim, probably the most powerful warlord in the country, is the Defense Minister and Senior Vice-President and holds the real power in the government (25). According to a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel it is "an open secret" that "Even the topmost member of the central government is deeply mixed up in the drug trade." The magazine discusses the situation in Kunduz province where German soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have been deployed and explains that Fahim's power in this area "is in large part supported by drug money. Up to now, his commanders have been regulating the opium trade within their spheres of influence. It's their primary source of revenue. Anyone who interferes with the trade in their districts lives dangerously" (26). Fahim's troops play a key role in U.S.-led operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the southern provinces; they also control strategic points in and around Kabul (27).

Running the government has allowed warlords to renew the reign of terror they subjected Afghans to in the 1990s. A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report titled Killing You Is a Very Easy Thing for Us (released in July 2003) "documents army and police troops kidnapping Afghans and holding them for ransom in unofficial prisons; breaking into households and robbing families; raping women, girls and boys; and extorting shopkeepers and bus, truck and taxi drivers." According to HRW, "The testimony of victims and witnesses implicates soldiers and police under the command of many high-level military and political officials in Afghanistan. These include Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the Minister of Defense; Hazrat Ali, the military leader of the Eastern Region; Younis Qanooni, the Minister of Education" (28).

Narco-Warlords

As one observer put it, "The Northern Alliance has always indulged in opium production, but now it has captured some of the richest opium-growing lands in the country" (29). According to the U.N,, most of the Afghan poppy fields are in the five provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan (all three in the south), Nangarhar (east) and Badakshan (north). Out of these, Helmand and Nangarhar are the richest. According to Asia Times (Hong Kong), "Several reports claim that warlords of the five provinces where most of the Afghan opium is harvested have amassed immense power and fortunes. These warlords and their associates have fostered trade in a brutal underground economy that trafficks in drugs, weapons and other contraband" (30). Opium farmers sell their crops to regional warlords and associated drug traffickers who turn the poppies into heroin in chemical and packaging factories in the area. The drugs are then transported to the Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Iran borders with safe passage provided by warlords. Raw opium is smuggled as well (31). The heroin factories in Afghanistan have been set up since 1999 and now can be found all over the country (32). Previously, most of the poppies were refined into heroin outside the country. With the factories have come the criminal networks that operate them and both signify the movement of a large part of the "narcotics apparatus" into Afghanistan (33). The factories also mean increased profits for the warlords since heroin costs much more than raw opium and is easier to smuggle. Each factory can produce about $700,000 worth of heroin a week (34).

Nangarhar province is ruled by Hazrat Ali, head of Afghanistan's eastern military command, who, as stated, has been bought off by the U.S. and Britain with millions of dollars. "A favourite of the American commanders," Ali has a reputation for being amongst "the biggest heroin and opium mafia in Afghanistan's Pashtun belt." (Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group and live mostly in the south and east). He played "a pivotal role" in eliminating al-Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan. It was his men who fought with the U.S. against Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda at the Tora Bora caves (near the Pakistan border) at the end of 2001. According to McCoy, al-Qaida fighters at the caves were able to escape to Pakistan after paying Ali's officers $5,000 a head. Ali has "cooperated extensively" with U.S. military forces in the east since the Tora Bora operation (35).

Journalist reports "consistently link Hazrat Ali to the opium trade and smuggling networks now choking Jalalabad" [capital of Nangarhar]. His commanders live in mansions said to be built with drug money. Ali ran Jalalabad airport in the mid-90's at a time when weekly flights to the Gulf States and India transported massive amounts of opium to the West. Now he controls the best opium land in Afghanistan. Ali is enormously corrupt and "one of the most prominent violators of human rights in eastern Afghanistan" according to Human Rights Watch (36).

After Ali took over Jalalabad from the Taliban, the New York Times described the place as "a city in the hands of thugs and crooks...the land where almost everything is corrupt." According to the news- paper, Ali stole food aid for the poor and engaged in massive extortion of foreign journalists. Since then Ali's forces have been seizing land, homes and property belonging to residents, engaging in wanton looting and robberies, and extorting money from truck, bus and taxi drivers (37).

Troops and police under Ali are known for carrying out arbitrary arrests, torture, beatings, kidnappings and the rape of women, girls and boys. Ali's forces regularly arrest people with the excuse that they are Taliban supporters and torture them in private prisons to extort money from their families. According to a university student in Jalalabad, "Many of the soldiers in the military unit with Hazrat Ali are just teenagers, and the commanders use them for sex purposes" (38).

Another U.S. favourite is Gul Agha Sherzai, "a major opium godfather" who rules Kandahar province, former stronghold of the Taliban. In August 2003, Sherzai was removed from the post of governor of Kandahar by Karzai and appointed minister of urban development and housing. This, however, has little practical effect as Sherzai remains "at the head of a complex clientelistic network of alliances that controls all aspects of military, economic and political life in Kandahar province." Sherzai was replaced by Yusuf Pashtun, his former spokesperson. The New York Times called Sherzai "the biggest warlord of them all." He reportedly controls the heroin trade in southern Afghanistan and opium production "dominates economic life" in Kandahar. Sherzai ruled Kandahar as governor from 1992 to 1994 as well and during this time the area was one of the largest sources of opium in Afghanistan (39).

In addition to getting millions of dollars in bribes from the U.S.(as mentioned), Sherzai drove into Kandahar (during the fight against the Taliban) accompanied by 12 U.S. Special Forces advisors with his way paved by U.S. air strikes. According to one observer, "the campaign's military strategy was dictated by the Americans." Sherzai's 1,500 troops were armed with U.S. weapons and dressed in second-hand American uniforms. Presently, Washington continues to work "so closely" with Sherzai against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, that one of the warlord's brothers keeps a compound on the U.S. base at Kandahar airport where he and his troops provide perimeter security (40).

Sherzai's name evokes shock and horror in the villages around Kandahar due to his rapacious rule during 1992-94. At that time, Sherzai and other warlords stripped Kandahar city of "everything of value," and rape, robbery and extortion were widespread. As Ghlume Walli, a Kandahar resident put it, "The men of Gul Agha will kill you even if you have nothing." Today, Sherzai's rule is once again marked by endemic corruption and lack of security (41).

A close associate of Sherzai's is Ayub Afridi, "Pakistan's most wanted drug baron." Afridi was freed from prison in Karachi in December 2001 after serving only a few weeks of a seven-year sentence for drug trafficking. His early release was not explained by Pakistani authorities. Afridi moved to Afghanistan to "work with anti-Taliban forces." According to Asia Times, the U.S. and Pakistan have turned to Afridi to unite Pashtun warlords in eastern and southern Afghanistan against the Taliban. According to the journal, "Afridi is probably the only person capable of gathering the Pashtun commanders and tribal chiefs together to broker their interests to get them to agree on one leadership." This is because "All of the major Afghan warlords, except for the Northern Alliance's Ahmed Shah Masood, who had his own opium fiefdom in northern Afghanistan, were a part of Afridi's coalition of drug traders in the CIA-sponsored holy war against the Soviets" (42).

Recycling Extremists

Inspite of all the wealth and power showered on the narco-warlords by Washington they have not been able to stop the Taliban. In recent months, the militia has returned to Afghanistan with a vengeance. Since August 2003, the Taliban have killed more than four hundred Afghans and four U.S. soldiers. U.S. bases and Afghan government forces are attacked almost daily and international aid agencies have fled southern Afghanistan after the Taliban murdered 15 aid workers. Most of Zabul province is now controlled by the militia and about half of Kandahar and much of Oruzgan province are "beyond government authority" (43). The U.S.' allowance of the massive poppy boom has backfired as the Taliban have used heroin money to fund their assaults. A major factor in the Taliban's resurgence has been the violent and corrupt behaviour of the warlords which has alienated many Afghans once more and increased public support for the militia. As a recent study by the Council on Foreign Relations states, Washington's plans to "pacify Afghanistan appear to be unravelling" (44).

During its rule the Taliban wiped out warlordism and the robbery and infighting that accompanies it. However, the militia's reign was marked by brutal fundamentalist authoritarianism especially the extreme repression of women. The Taliban, too, were backed by the U.S. and installed in power by its close ally Pakistan (45). The Northern Alliance and the Taliban are both pan-Islamic religious fundamentalists. Thus for the last 24 years, the U.S. has been backing different groups of religious extremists in Afghanistan putting first the Northern Alliance in power then replacing it with the Taliban and then vice versa. The main reason for the U.S.' preference for religious fanatics is its and Pakistan's fear of Afghan nationalism which no outside power has been able to control (46). The U.S. has used the combination of heroin trafficking and religious zealotry to denationalize Afghanistan. The opium-financed Taliban and warlords have devastated the country with factional warfare and obscurantism so that there has been no chance for the growth of Afghan nationalism, economic development and inclusive state institutions. However, the U.S. has not been able to control the religious extremists either and now has to occupy the country with its own troops. Washington's suppression of Afghan nationalism has created a quagmire for it in that country from which it seems to have no escape.

ENDNOTES

(1) For details see Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, 2nd rev. ed., Chicago, Lawrence Hill Books, 2003.

(2) "Opium 'Threatens Afghan Growth'," BBC, December 23, 2003, http//news.bbc.co.uk "Afghanistan Retakes Heroin Crown," BBC, March 3 , 2003.

(3) "Opium 'threatens' Afghan future," BBC, October 29, 2003,; "Opium crop clouds Afghan recovery," BBC, September 22, 2003; Ian Traynor, "Afghanistan ‘at the Mercy of Narco-Terrorists,’ " The Guardian, October 30, 2003; Sam Zia-Zarifi, "Losing the Peace in Afghanistan," Human Rights Watch World Report 2004, January 2004; Seymour Hersh, "The Other War," The New Yorker, April 5, 2004.

(4) Paul Harris, "Victorious Warlords Set to Open the Opium Floodgates," The Observer, November 25, 2001.

(5) Patrick Cockburn, "Drug Control Agency in Kabul is Evicted," Counterpunch, January 29, 2002; Ustina Markus, " It's Not Only the West that Suffers," The Observer, December 2, 2001; Jimmy Burns, Carola Hoyos, "US and UN 'ignoring' menace of opium cultivation," Financial Times, February 17 2002.

<6) "U.S.: Afghan Poppy Crop Leaping," Reuters, Nov 28, 2003.

(7) "Afghanistan retakes..." BBC, op.cit.; Jason Burke, "Afghan drug lords set up heroin labs," The Observer, August 11, 2002.

(8) Luke Harding, "Flourishing Again, Afghanistan's Deadly - and Lucrative - Crop," February 21, 2002, http//www.sunnahonline.com/ilm/contemporary/post_taliban/0007.htm.

(9)Tim Golden, "Afghan Ban On Growing Of Opium Is Unraveling," New York Times, October 22, 2001.

(10) "U.S.: Afghan Poppy..." Reuters, op.cit.

(11) Thom Shanker, "Rumsfeld Confers With Afghan Leader and Warlords," New York Times, December 5, 2003.

(12) Ramtanu Maitra, "Washington's Afghan Plan Unravels,"Asia Times, July 15, 2003, www.atimes.com; Sudha Ramachandran, "Afghan Allies Turn Enemies," Asia Times, November 5, 2003; "Afghan Poppies Proliferate," The Washington Post, July 12, 2003; Sohail Abdul Nasir, "Afghanistan: The More it Changes," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2003.

(13) McCoy, op.cit., pp. 441-460; Syed Saleem Shahzad, "U.S. Turns to Drug Baron to Rally Support," Asia Times, December 4, 2001; Markus, op.cit.

(14) Robert Fisk, "We Are the War Criminals Now," The Independent, November 29, 2001; "What Will the Northern Alliance Do in Our Name? I Dread to Think," The Independent, November 14, 2001.

(15) Seymour Hersh, "The Other War," The New Yorker, April 5, 2004.

(16) Ibid.

(17) Marc Perelman, "U.S. Taking Heat for an Afghan Drug Boom: Opium Trade Blossoms Again," Forward, June 6, 2003, http//www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.06.06/news5.html.

(18) Richard Norton-Taylor and Agencies, "Nato Happy to Ignore Explosion in Afghan Opium Output, Says Russia," The Guardian, February 9, 2004.

(19) Alfred McCoy, Interview with Author, February 11, 2004; McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, op.cit., p. 520; McCoy and Johnson quoted in Perelman, op.cit.

(20) McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, op.cit., p. 521; Maitra, op.cit.; Mark Berniker, "Afghanistan: Back to Bad Opium Habits," Asia Times, December 25, 2002; Zia Zarifi, op.cit.

(21) Sonali Kolhatkar, "Warlords Stand in the Way," Asia Times, October 8, 2003.

(22) Peter Dale Scott, "Poppy Paradox: U.S. War in Afghanistan Boosts Terror Funds," Pacific News Service, August 1, 2002.

(23) Kolhatkar, op.cit.

(24) John F. Burns, "Afghanistan’s Former King Sets Mid-April for Return, Ignoring Warnings of Threats," New York Times, March 31, 2002.

(25) Mark Sedra, "Twin Approach Blurs Goals," Asia Times, October 8, 2003; Isabel Hilton, "Now we pay the warlords to tyrannise the Afghan people," The Guardian (UK), July 31, 2003.

(26) Sudha Ramachandran, "Afghanistan's own opium wars," Asia Times, December 9, 2003.

(27) Ramachandran, "Afghan Allies..." op.cit.

(28) Human Rights Watch, "Afghanistan Warlords Implicated in New Abuses: Report Details Threats to Women's Rights, Freedom of Expression," July 29, 2003, www.hrw.org.

(29) Harris, op.cit.

(30) Berniker, op.cit.

(31) Harris, op.cit.; Berniker, op.cit.; Owais Tohid, "Bumper Year for Afghan Poppies," Christian Science Monitor, July 24, 2003.

(32) Mark Galeotti, "Business As Usual for Afghan Drugs," The Observer, December 2, 2001; Traynor, op.cit.

(33) Sedra, op.cit.

(34) Galeotti, op.cit.; Burke, op.cit.

(35) Shahzad, op.cit; Ahmed Rashid, "The Mess in Afghanistan," New York Review of Books, February 12, 2004; Nasir, op.cit.; Hilton, op.cit.; McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, op.cit., pp. 521, 524; Human Rights Watch, "Killing You Is a Very Easy Thing for Us:" Human Rights Abuses in Southeast Afghanistan, July 2003.

(36) Harris, op.cit.; Rashid, op.cit.; Kathy Gannon, "Afghans Grow Disillusioned with U.S.: American-backed Warlords Threaten Peace, They Say," Associated Press, September 8, 2003; Zia-Zarifi, op.cit.

(37) C.J. Chivers, "A City, Free of Taliban, Returns to the Thieves," New York Times, January 6, 2002; Human Rights Watch, "Killing You...," op.cit.

(38) Human Rights Watch, "Killing You...," op.cit.; Zia-Zarifi, op.cit.; Hilton, op.cit.; Rashid, op.cit.

(39) Peter Maass, "Gul Agha Gets His Province Back," New York Times Magazine, January 6, 2002; Gordon Campbell, "Galesburg," New Zealand Listener, August 30-September 5 2003; Mark Sedra, op.cit.; Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai, "A Deadly Habit. Afghan Warlords -Most of Them U.S. Allies - May be Making a Fortune Off the Country's Drug Trade," MSNBC.com, July 14, 2003; Mark W. Herold, "Livin' Large Inside Karzai's Reconstruction Bubble," September 24, 2003, http//www.cursor.org/stories/afghaniscam.html; Ewen MacAskill, "Kandahar Berates Straw for a Leftover Life of Gun law and Broken Promises," The Guardian, July 2, 2003; STRATFOR, "Afghans Not Likely to Curb Opium Despite Promise Meant to Placate International Donors," STRATFOR Global Intelligence Update, February 2, 2002, www.stratfor.com.

(40) April Witt, "Afghan Governor Strains To Shed Warlord Image:Gul Agha's Rule in Kandahar Dismays Some in Kabul, Washington Post, April 15, 2003; Preston Mendenhall, "Tales From the Road to Kandahar," MSNBC.com, January 15, 2002; Maass, op.cit.

(41) Paul Harris, "Warlords Bring New Terrors," The Observer, December 2, 2001; John Pomfret, "Anxiety on the Border: 'Mafia' Traders Fear Life After Taliban," Washington Post, November 28, 2001; MacAskill, op.cit.; Sarah Chayes, "Afghanistan: Rebuilding Akokolacha," Christian Science Monitor, December 10, 2002.

(42) Shahzad, op.cit; STRATFOR, op.cit.; Herold, op.cit.

(43) Rashid, op.cit; Jason Burke, "Stronger and More Deadly, the Terror of the Taliban is Back," The Observer, November 16, 2003; Andy McSmith and Phil Reeves "Afghanistan Regains its Title as World's Biggest Heroin Dealer," The Independent, June 22, 2003.

(44) Zia-Zarifi, op.cit.; Gannon, op.cit.; John Cherian, "A Fundamentalist Revival," Frontline, July 5-18, 2003.

(45) "CIA Worked in Tandem with Pakistan to Create Taliban," The Times of India, 7 March 2001.

(46) Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, New York, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 61-63, 254-255.