The Underworld Podcast - Taliban Heroin Gang and the Failed War on Afghanistan's Opium

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

Over the last two decades, the Taliban have moved from simply taxing Afghanistan's opium farmers to controlling every link in the chain of the world's biggest heroin supply. In Afghanistan's Opium Nation, we took you through the history of Afghanistan's opium and heroin industry up until the American invasion in 2001. In this episode, we recap the last 20 years of failed efforts to curtail the country's drug trade, detailing how US allies ramped up their growing and trafficking efforts just as the Taliban were doing the same. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. Summer 2014, an early morning raid on a two-car convoy in the lawless and arid landscape of southern Afghanistan. Afghan special ops are in a helicopter, and they've zeroed in on the cars. This is a popular superhighway, as the New York Times article calls it, for sure. smugglers of all types and insurgents. It connects Nymruz province, a big transshipment point for all sorts of contraband with Hellman province, who over 50% of Afghanistan's opium is concentrated. Depending on the year, the numbers fluctuate, but by most estimates, this would have it mean that around 40% of the world's heroin supply originates in Hellman province these days.

40%, and that's all of the heroin on earth. It varies over the years, but most estimates in the last few decades, but the total amount of heroin originating in Afghanistan at between 80 to 95%, though I should add that very little of the U.S.'s heroin supply comes from there. That's mostly from Mexico, Colombia, and even Guatemala. But the Afghan special ops scenes are focused on these two cars. They fire a few tracer rounds and cause the cars to come to a sharp stop. When the raid is finished, they've confiscated a bunch of weapons, nearly a ton of opium. I don't mean tons as like shorthand for a lot.

I mean a literal ton. The men in the cars are taken into custody, and one of them, a 40-year-old, he was a fake name and claims to be a carpet selling, which I mean like, fair play. It takes weeks that they eventually figure out he's actually Mullah Abdul Rashid Baluch, the Taliban shadow commander for numerous province, a man infamously known for orchestrating a mass suicide attack during Ramadan. Now, though, he wasn't just the Taliban leader. He was also a super-powerful drug lord.

He's tried, convicted, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. This is the other surprising thing here, because in Afghanistan during the war, many of the top drug lords, whether they were Taliban-affiliated or affiliated with the government or serving as actual officials in the government allied with the U.S., are all too often freed or immediately let go, despite all sorts of evidence the high uproles they play in the country's rapidly growing opium trade. In fact, some of the high-level Afghan officials tasked with fighting the drug war were drug lords themselves. This is the Underworld podcast. Welcome back, everyone. This is Danny Gold, and I'm here with Sean Williams.

Hello? This is the podcast where we encourage you never to talk about prices over devices. And also, we delve into the world of transnational organized crime as only two journalists who have covered this stuff can. As always, support the Patreon. Patreon.com slash the Underworld podcast. You give us $5 a month. You'll get all the bonus interviews that we've done, which there's a new one every week almost.

Tons, yeah. $10 will get you scripts and all the source lists, so on and so on. If you get it up to like 50 or 100, I will personally force Sean to mule whatever you need across borders and airports. It doesn't matter.

No disagreements there, Sean? You can, I mean, for $200, you can pick the orifice that it stays in. Jesus Christ. Anyway, welcome. Welcome back. We are continuing this week with our theme of opium and Afghanistan. We're going to be going through, you know, our Taliban heroin gang and the American War and Occupation. The last one, if you go back two weeks, take us through the origin story

of Afghanistan's Opium Nation from ancient times, through the Russian War, the emergence of the Taliban all the way up to September 11th. And what a fine time it was. Thank you to everyone who wrote in and let us know they really dug the episode. And again, reminder, this isn't going to be like a thorough examination of the war. For that, you should probably read the recently released Afghanistan papers or an Uncle Paul's book. No, this is about drugs. Wait, what else do we pot about? There are variations, but mostly, mostly it's about drugs and all the fun stuff that comes with it. And that opening antidote, that's from a big two-part New York Times series by Azam Ahmed. It's a really great work. I think it was released in 2016. And the man he talks about

there, interestingly enough, was released in 2019, not through good old-fashioned bribery or threats, but through a prisoner exchange over a bunch of kidnapped Indian engineers that were taken hostage by the Taliban. Side note, though, I really think I could be good at like these hostage exchange negotiators for this sort of stuff if that career path is open. I honestly think, I feel like I can see both sides a lot, you know? It's a good skill to have. Oh, okay. Well, you reckon you could renegotiate our deal for this podcast then? Yeah, that's a skill that I don't have. Anyway, yeah, that Patreon is up and running.

But yes, we're going to work our way through the last 20 years of Afghanistan's Opium Industry. The industry of the U.S. spent like $9 billion or $8 billion trying to shut down and just failed miserably. Did they really, really try to shut it down? Like, really? I mean, at some points, they did. But as we'll see, it's complicated.

And that wasn't the original focus. And even shutting it down, if it was the focus. focus, you know, it's not as simple as it seems because there's a lot of different intricacies that go into it. And one thing I really didn't get to dive into in the last episode was the networks that take this heroin and opium and spread it out all around the world. So I just want to do a quick rundown of that. There's a great GAO report from 2000 that looks into them. And obviously, some things on the ground have changed since then, but I think a lot of it still stands. And we kind of broke down how a lot of it moves over the border into Pakistan, into Iran, or taking the northern route through Tajikistan.

This report says the Pakistan route is mainly trafficked in cargo containers by air or sea, you know, after getting up there in trucks, sometimes using ports and African cities as stops before heading to Western Europe and the UK. Now, the route through Iran primarily uses trucks to keep going through Turkey, work and head through the Balkans before spreading into Europe. That goes through Albania. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it always always does. It always does. In Interpol report describes a route going through Russia, some choice quotes, two primary routes are used to smuggle heroin, the Balkan route, which runs through Southeast and Europe, and the Silk Route, which runs through Central Asia. The anchor port for the Balkan route is Turkey, which remains a major staging area and

transportation route for heroin destined for European markets. And also, although the Balkan route is considered the primary supply line for Western Europe, Afghan and Central Asian traffickers smuggle heroin along the Silk Route into Russia, the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, and all other parts of Europe. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan are vital transit countries. We should do a whole episode on that mad Turkmenistani president. I wrote his name down. I'm going to try and say it right now. Give it a go.

Dubanguli, Burden Mohamedov. Is that, is that, is that it? This guy like hunts on horseback, build statues of his dogs that have raptured with his grandson a few years back. He's incredible. We're going to do a show on him. Like, episode 2050. I feel like that's a joint Robert Evans production, you know? But yeah, basically heroin goes through every country everywhere.

I mean, that's my takeaway. And it's just a whole lot of smack everywhere. In fact, by 2001, Iran and Pakistan were estimated to have the largest proportionate. of drug users in the world, according to an international crisis group report. With Central Asia, like really catching up, all of this because the Afghanistan opium heroin routes went, just goes right through them, which, I mean, it's interesting question, too, when you think about like Mexico, Colombia and cocaine users, like, don't be wrong, I've had some nights out in Colombia, and the Colombians, they definitely love to Hoover their fair share

of sneef, but I'm pretty sure the U.S. and London are leading the way with that. Oh, by mile. If you go to the guys toilet at half time at English for it will match, like, more guys are doing snow there than in Berkine. It's insane. Everyone. I wonder, I mean, I'm sure there are reports on it that I just didn't look up

what the usage levels are like in Colombia and in Mexico. Yeah. So that'll be our homework for next time. And another thing I found interesting, though, about this heroin trade was just how segmented it is, right? With the U.S., you had maybe the Colombians to the Mexicans,

some Dominicans, then to distribute in the U.S., but with this heroin, like, although I guess when it goes, cocaine goes into West Africa and Europe, it's similar. But with the heroin, it just passes through so many countries. So there's so many different people getting a little bite there. In 2013, Vanda Felbaugh Brown, who I quote a lot, describe the networks like this, quote, unlike the Latin American drug trade, international drug trafficking from Afghanistan appears to be highly segmented with a multitude of organizations and actors, including

Turkish and Kurdish drug trafficking organizations, the Russian mafia and military, members of Central Asian governments and law enforcement, the Chinese triads, and Balkan smuggling outfits, having a piece of the trade in their territories, while organized crime groups in Western and Eastern Europe dominate distribution in consumer countries.

So how is everyone making money on this, like, Brazilian country drug run? Like, each border, a guard, each stop, a policeman, every time unloaded, really, loaded. I don't, like, it's just so many people. There's so many parts in play. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, the value just just goes up and up and up and, and, uh, obviously the sale, the price goes up and up and up and we pay. You get these kilos in, uh, in Afghanistan and

they're a couple hundred dollars and then it just keeps going up and up and up until it reaches, like your, you know, your, um, your customer when it's gone through so many different levels. And the price is definitely higher than, uh, well, a lot higher than what it is. I mean, it's, it's fascinating thing about how that transpo breaks down, how the money breaks down, who is doing the deals and making moves with who and just how that price gets inflated. But yeah, back to the timeline. We left off right when 9-11 happens. The Taliban had banned opium cultivation, though some say it was a manipulative of effort to juice the price or that they had plenty of opium stocks, you know, already in play that they were holding onto and they were just trying to gain

international legitimacy. One report says they'd actually pulled back on the ban shortly before the towers were hit, but as soon as September 11th hits, and the realization sets in that the U.S. is going to go after the Taliban, the opium, it just gets going again. Wait, so how come, like, trying to buy weapons and stuff? No, I think it's more that a vacuum of power, right? And people realized that the Taliban weren't going to be focused on this, or the Taliban had to stop caring about it because they're never going to get international legit in this now. I mean, again, these are assumptions. Right before September 11th, the price of a kilo of opium in the area is at a high of $746. A month after the attack, it drops to less than $100, either because people were dumping

their stock or the growing season was expected to be huge. And again, the assumption is, with the Taliban on the run, some of the old farmers and drug lord started openly planting again as planting season was nearing. Allegedly, according to Gretchen Peters, who again is a woman who would quote a ton because her papers were fantastic. When the bombing started in October, September of 2001, George W. Bush had met with his National Security Council and been encouraged by the Pentagon to hit some major opium-producing targets. But in the end, they declined to do so because of a fear of pissing off the local population and creating a lot of collateral damage. Oh, good job they starts with that plan throughout the war, eh? Yeah, yeah, it doesn't really kind of seem silly to say that was a consideration back then.

But yeah, apparently the British were pushing for these bombing runs because so much of England's heroin was coming from Afghanistan. And the CIA estimated it could have done some serious damages to the shortly resurgent opium trade. But yeah, it just wasn't, it wasn't a consideration then, right? The consideration was going after the Taliban and all that. So when the U.S. comes in in 2001, they need allies on the ground to take on the Taliban. And they mostly partner with anti-Taliban warlords, some of whom were interested. involved in the drug trade or about to get involved in the drug trade. You know, these guys were seen as being too important not to link up with,

no matter how brutal or corrupted they had been and were going to be. And we'll see that's a constant theme throughout the next 20 years. From Matt Aiken's and a 2014 Rolling Stone article, quote, Hamid Karzai, who had been plucked from obscurity to serve as president, was busy cementing with U.S. acquiescence, a political order deeply linked to the opium trade. In the north, he wooed the Northern Alliance commanders as partners. In his southern homeland, he appointed Chair Muhammad Akunzada as governor of Helmand, the nephew of the now deceased Mullah Nassim, the same guy who had first introduced large-scale

poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. Remember, we talked about him in the last episode. Karzai, of course, stays present for the next 13 years, you know, and there's heroin traffickers and drug lords rising up in political positions, including his half-brother, who was alleged to have been a top player in the drug trade, one if the most, if not the most, if not the most powerful man in the South before he was assassinated in 2011. The opium cultivation, it starts going again, it hits the ground running. By 2003, according to the LA Times, President Karzai, he proclaims the jihad or

holy war against the opium production. But members of his government, they're continuing to reap enormous profits from their roles in the trade. And the Taliban, within a year or two of that, they're starting to use opium to help sustain their fight against these guys, against the coalition and government forces. If Karzai drops the jihad and no one cares, does it make a sound? Clearly, it does not. So those early days of the war, right, the early 2000s, the U.S. wasn't super focused on the opium issue.

It wasn't seen as a main problem that needed to be tackled. They were there to take on the terrorists, the Taliban, Akkaida, all that. Like I said, it was the Brits who first got involved. Yeah, I mean, there were loads of news shows at this time with, like, correspondence standing in front of piles of burnt opium giggling and pissing their pants about the fact that the Brits were dismantling the opium crops in Hellmand. It's pretty funny, actually. There's loads of stuff on YouTube.

Anyway, people can watch that. If they were standing close to the burning crops, they might have been giggling for like different reasons, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think there is a clip. Oh, I'm just thinking of it now of a reporter.

I don't know whether it's burning weed or cocoa or... I know the guy. He just gets super, super high. It is hilarious. But yeah, spring of 2002, the Brits, they start offering to pay Afghan farmers off to destroy their opium crops. But these Afghan farmers, you know, they're not dummies. They would harvest their crops, then show the Brits the fields being destroyed after the harvest and double cash in. Or just show them part of the field destroyed and get money that way as a 2019 article by Craig Whitlock in the Washington Post details.

All right. Now I'm on the side of the Afghan farmers for sure. That's cool. Oh, yeah. Surprise. You're on the side of the people growing and trading. drugs. Shocker. The basic thing with the American forces was confusion, right? They didn't know what to do or what department was handling what, which military forces should do what and what

would actually work. I've seen the early days of the policy towards opium cultivation described as laissez-faire, as in like kind of, you know, making it up as they went along, not sure. Each kind of guy on the ground is kind of left up to them. Eventually, people started to get clued in that this was going to be a problem. In September 2005, diplomatic cable, then U.S. Ambassador Ronald Newman warned the White House in the State Department that, quote, narcotics could be the factor that causes corruption

to consume Afghanistan's fledging democracy. You know, nobody knew what to do, but people worse starting to get worried. Like, do you spray, do you rip them up? Do you arrest people? Even if it's going to piss off the locals? Like, it's a tough call because you could end up fucking up the poor farmers

pissing off that population, who you need on your side. So, like, what do you think is going to happen? What do you do? I mean, this is all a bit interesting. disingenuous, right? Like, how do we know now that all these U.S. back war laws are shipping smack around the world, and the State Department back then didn't? Well, it's not disingenuous, right? It was a calculation. I don't know how up

what their level of awareness was, because, again, things were just starting to get going then. I think they knew some of these guys had done that before, but also, again, it wasn't seen as a necessary calculation at that moment because the focus was on it. Again, it's different priorities, right? The CIA is not going to be concerned with drug trafficking. That's the DA that's concerned with that. Right? Yeah. That's the DA that's concerned with that. So there was a lot of issues where the DA would go after someone in the CIA or the State Department be like, nah, you know? So that that is an issue that's, that's happening there. And also, there's a real calculation there. I mean, I've seen this mentioned. Again, I don't know how much merit it has

that the U.S. was like, well, there was a calculation by some of these high level guys that, that, well, the opium's going, not going to us. You know, so maybe it's not a major concern for us. which, you know, it is kind of that, that realist perspective that's so calculating and yeah, yeah. But, you know, it's tough. Like, as I've said with opium before, the thing about major drug cultivation industries like this is it becomes at once like a destabilizing force because with it comes money and violence and corruption. But it's also stabilizing, especially in this case, because we're talking tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs where there are not that many, not that many. not that many opportunities there. And, you know, if you go at them hard, again, you're going to piss off these people that

you want on your side. You're going to push them to your enemies. But if you let it go, the corruption and just the nastiness of the drug trade keeps flowing. It's not as clear cut as it seems. And fell Bob Brown in 2020, she says, quote, although the illicit drug economy exacerbates insecurity, strengthens corruption, produces macroeconomic distortions, and contributes to substance abuse disorder. It also provides a vital life.

for many Afghans and enhances their human security. Yeah, like if you're a journalist and the pandemic screws all your stories, and you need to find another living and you start doing a pod and write all these scripts and bonus episodes and people still don't sign up to the Patreon? I mean, what are you going to do? Get into drugs, sex. Is that what you're saying? Is that the allegory?

I don't necessarily see an allegory there that where these two things make sense, but I'm glad that you brought it off. That's fine. Patreon.com, people. So the policy as we're going to see is ever changing as they try to figure it out. 2000, 2003, it's kind of arbitrary, but you have the payments for farmers destroying their crops, and there's interdictions of crops, shipments, and all that. Interdictions?

Like, I guess fancy way of saying like interceptions going after like smugglers and traffickers and things like that and storehouses and everything. 2004 is when it does kick up a notch. And the U.S. and international allies, they start getting aggressive. According to Whitlock in the Washington Post, Congress pressures the INL, which is the Bureau of International Narcotic and Law Enforcement Affairs, which is actually a huge agency

most people haven't heard of. They get pressure to get aggressive with cracking down. Actually, I didn't know about that at all. I didn't even know what the I&L was until maybe five years ago when I was doing stories in El Salvador

and kind of developed their source in it and had to look them up because it kind of seems like the DEA does a lot of that work too. Yeah, they, you know, they're very involved in international drug trafficking affairs and similar to the DA, I guess.

I mean, I don't know the specifics. Man, use Google. Of course, that doesn't really work in no small part because some of the Afghan allies are heavily involved with the drug trade, including Karzai's half-brother, who's just moving up the ranks and is tied in with all these people. At one point, there's even talks of spraying the crops, like Agent Orange style from the air,

but President Karzai vetoes it, said Ronald McMullen, who was the director of the INL's Afghanistan-Pakistan office from 2006-2007, quote, urging Karzai to mount an effective counter-narcotics campaign was like asking an American president to halt all U.S. economic activity west of the Mississippi. That was the magnitude of what we were asking the Afghans to do. I mean, I kind of want to face off movie with Karzai and his half-brother.

Ben Kingsley, both roles, Guy Ritchie's a direct. Guy, I'm here, I'm here. I don't envy the position Karzai's in, right? Obviously, he's very corrupt, but it's kind of like, is he stopping the aerial spraying out of that corruption? Because he realizes like when you start spraying stuff from the air in rural, Afghanistan, like that is not going to, you know, that's not going to win over hearts and minds and the population. That is going to fly.

That is, yeah. Like I understand it to a degree. In 2008, the New York Times Magazine publishes a massive first person article from this guy, Thomas Schweich, who had been involved with counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan, you know, a high-level official. He met Karzai in 2006, and he writes, quote, over the next two years, I would discover how deeply the Afghan government was involved in protecting the opium trade by shielding it from American design policies. Narco traffickers were buying off hundreds of police chiefs, judges, and other officials. Narco corruption went to the top of the Afghan government.

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The Canberia Hotels got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Bring a date, your squad, or even your mom. Book direct at choiceotails.com. Like, he's right. You know, like I got to be honest, I read the article and kind of feel like he's kind of a real stick in the mud,

you know, not fun at parties, does get a little carried away. I mean, he's even saying there was a myth of a poor farmer. growing this stuff, which is what allows European governments to avoid the messy anti-drug efforts and allow military officers to avoid it for the same reasoning. But again, corruption, 100% there. I don't really buy that. It really was poor farmers growing some of it.

Yeah, maybe he's been honking on the pipe himself there. Dude, he died years ago. How dare you? Just disrespectful. Disrespectful. Speak ill of the dead. That's another T-shirt we can print. Well, take this 2011, that GOP, Sean, the Opium Wars.

You know, the writer interviews a farmer and Hellman who says, quote, we have two forms of money here, poppies and American dollars. This is our economy. The Taliban aren't pressuring me. That's just a story you see on TV. I grow for myself. I smuggle for myself. The Taliban are not the reason.

Poverty is the reason. And they'll keep growing poppies here until they're forced not to. Who will stop the smugglers? The police? It's the police who transport our opium in their cars. It's the American dream. I mean, he sounds like El Chapo, right? Well, I mean, it's, you know, a couple sentences that really summarize not just the situation in Afghanistan, but the drug war in general across the world, you know?

Absolutely. That's the most telling thing in this whole show so far. Like, it's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Chouyke continues in the article, quote, Karzai was playing us like a fiddle. The U.S. would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure improvement. The U.S. and its allies would fight the Taliban.

Karzai's friends could get rich off the drug trade. He could blame the West for his problems. and in 2009, it would be elected to a new term. Okay, so I did a little swatting up on Karzai, because, I don't know, I've been out there, like I've heard a lot of shitty things about him. According to a U.S. cable, the ambassador at the time, the U.S. ambassador, Carl Eichenberry, said that Karzai's, quote, inability to grasp the most rudimentary principles of state building and his deep-seated insecurity as a leader combined to make any admission of fault unlikely.

in turn confound in our best efforts to find in Karzai a responsible partner. Now that, as the partner of a diplomat guys, is diplomat speak for a complete fucking idiot. And like, it's insane. Like, how did this guy even come to power? Yeah. Yeah, yes. But like, it felt like they were like, oh, why don't you run Luxembourg for a while? You know what I'm saying?

Like, I think. Well, why didn't they just say that? Who gives a shit about Luxembourg? I think he was going to have a tough time one way or another. You know, I think he, I'm not trying to rationalize a lot of the stuff that he did, but it wasn't like, he wasn't handed an easy job, you know? No, no, no one's, no one's doubting that. It's a poison chalice.

Yeah. But also, the guy is drinking from the chalice. Oh, no, he definitely was corrupt as hell, and he was getting rich in his family, he was getting rich. Like, there was no, there's no doubt about that. I mean, it's not just like, like, like, couple million dollars. I mean, we're talking like crypto money. You know, these guys were living, we're living large. Duffel bags full of $100 bills. But again, there were some efforts made to

combat the drug trade. They were going after the labs. They were going after large traffickers. The problem was no one really knew the lay the land or could suss out who was telling the truth. Again, uh, fell Bob Brown, quote, immediately, however, the effort was manipulated by local Afghan strongman to eliminate drug competition, ethnic, tribal, and other political rivals. Instead of targeting top echelons of the drug economy, many of whom had considerable political clout. Interdiction operations were largely conducted against small vulnerable traders who can neither sufficiently bribe nor adequately intimidate the interdiction teams and their supervisors within the Afghan government. I'm losing a lot of quotes here, and a lot of big words, a lot of multisyllable words. Also two interdictions, and I've never even heard of the word interdiction before in my life.

It's good work, though. You know, these, I want to give the people proper. This is good work. The U.S., you know, also by now, they had local Afghan units that were ripping up the crops manually. And this, again, is going to piss off the poor farmers. You know, they tried with these alternative means to work programs, but, you know, they never worked. And these farmers, remember, this was like the only economic opportunity in the South besides fighting. They're looking at the big guys getting away with it.

And they're pissed. And who steps in to fill that void? Who else? But the Taliban gang. Now, our boys in the Taliban, actually mostly they're Sean's boys, had gotten routed by the U.S. forces. And many of them crossed over the border into Pakistan to lick their wounds and wait things out, plot, you know, all that sort of good stuff. Nice. Yeah, yeah, cheap shot.

I mean, whatever doesn't piss off the Albanian, so I'll go with them, Taliban, ISIS, whatever. So here, according to Brown, they start billing themselves back up, you know, over a year or two without drug money, mostly from donations from Pakistan and the Middle East, and by taxing and. trafficking other goods back and forth across the border. Licit goods, you know. But the eradication effort, it really plays into their favor with their target audience, especially when it starts ratcheting up post-2004. The rural population is losing their income.

They're just getting driven further and further into the Taliban's hands. And it alienates the locals from the government, both federal, local, and with the local leaders allied with the U.S. who agree to the eradication efforts. It just pushes them further into, you know, into their enemy's hands. who realize they can step in, start supporting the farmers and locals who aren't politically connected enough to keep their opium cultivation going. And they start being seen as the good guys by some.

Again, Brown tells the story of the Taliban putting up posters, saying they would protect farmers that the government tried to destroy their crops or shut down their opium operations. You know, it tells the farmers to reach out to them. So there's one where a group of farmers realizes they're in the midst of like a police operation one day when they suss out. There's like an undercover counter-narcotics guy posing as a traitor. The farmers contact the Taliban. Taliban tells them,

kidnap this guy, hold them hostage, have him call the police in the area to come through, which he does. And the police come, and the Taliban kill the police, fight them off. The villages are saved from losing their opium, and the Taliban guys are seen as heroes.

Jesus Christ. I mean, on one hand, collective bargaining, seizing the means of production on the other mass murder. Yeah, toughie. Yeah, it's, um, it's, uh,

it's, It's a tough one, man. What do you... We'll let the listeners make up their own hands. Yeah, what are you going to do? So in the mid to late 2000s again, the Taliban now starts moving back into the opium industry, but mostly they're taxing growers and shipments,

providing protection and making inroads with the population and just making that drug money. The DEA and the INL, they're actually making some arrest. They're going after some traffickers, both Taliban affiliated and not, targeting kingpins and doing some seizures. In fact, in 2009, the DEA

its funds from Congress to do the biggest international surge in its history with 80 agents deploying to Afghanistan. Or maybe it was Pakistan, but the area to focus on Afghanistan. Like, can we take a step back to remind everyone that these are supposedly militant Islamists? Like, at this point, they're just loading, unloading smack shipments like half-baked Russians in a John Wu film. Yeah, I mean, it's, look, get money, you know? Like, I think a lot of the times... That's the old, my ideology, yeah.

A lot of the times there are, you know, people who come off as the most pious or the most, longest conviction and ideology are going to make compromises that they would obviously, you know, excommunicate other people for because it serves their best interests. Oh, you're not talking about, you're not talking about the Catholic Church, right? I'm talking about everyone. And there's a really good quote that you'll see coming up that I think breaks into, like, who was actually in charge of this. But yeah, I mean, you know, don't fall for this, the nonsense of, of, oh, we're really

strict in this and we're not going to do it. Everyone does it. It doesn't matter what ideology they are. Also in 2009, the Obama administration decides they're going to cool it with the eradication efforts. They're still doing military raids on Taliban-linked traffickers,

but they shift these other efforts to try out alternative crops or change jobs, you know? It's kind of like the... I mean, I don't know whether it was as bad as the trout farms and canyon deserts, but I wonder if there was like

a coding school that they were like, let's get these guys, let's teach these guys how to learn how to code. And then they won't have the traffic. I'll be able. I mean, I literally wrote a story about a co-working space right by the old palace in Kabul when I was there.

Wait, did you really? Actually, like, no joke. I actually wrote the first co-working space in Kabul was my story. Get out of here. Editors will take any old shit. Truthfully, though, like coding is a good idea. I got my advice to all your long as you're

No doubt I have a friend who like Just got out of the film industry And do journalism Like 38 Took like a coding boot camp That cost a bit of money Now he's making more money

Than any journalist I know After like six Anyway moving on Oh God Jesus Christ Don't do that Patreon dot com Moving on

The efforts The efforts fail For all the alternative Whatever job I mean there are some successes Right But for the most part they fail You know

In one instance They pay farmers To renovate these those irrigation canals to use for fruit trees and other crops. But instead, they just end up using them to irrigate poppies. Wheat was also like a big crop, but, you know, they would just switch off between weed and opium, depending on the money issue. I'm pretty sure you can grow opium.

Like, it's a fall winter crop, so you can grow it when you're not growing wheat. But, um... Yeah, I mean, every tallad needs is fiber, right? Yeah. But yeah, uh, Fellbaw Brown again, quote, after decades of cultivation and the collapse of legal economic opportunities, opium is deeply entrenched in the socio-economic fabric of Afghan society. that underlies much of the country's economic and power relations.

Many more actors than simply the Taliban participate in the opium economy, and these actors exist at all social levels. The crops, they do decline somewhat around 2009, a year before or after two, I think, but that has more to do with drought and other factors like overproduction in the years before, and the number of Afghans involved in the poppy industry actually declines from 2.4 million in 2007, 2008, to 1.6 million in 2008, 2009. But that number isn't going to stay down.

And now the Taliban are just getting further and further entrenched. Gretchen Peters in that 2016 paper details how the massive scale of Taliban drug operations has an oh shit moment during a battle in Marjah in 2009 when they're trying to clear an opium market. It takes days for NATO and Afghan troops to win. They kill 60 Taliban fighters, but they find 92 metric tons of hash, heroin, opium, and poppy seeds and hundreds of gallons of the chemicals need for refining.

And at the time, it's the second largest drug haul in world history. Are we talking Captagon for the biggest? I don't know. I mean, this is 2012, and Capiton doesn't kick off till later, but it's kind of like, it's like the prices and all that. These numbers get thrown around. I think, you know, you can safely surmise that 92 Metro Tons is like a fuckload of drugs. But people, you know, journalists love to throw on.

Take you from us. That's a fuckload. They love to throw on. What's it called? What are these called? What's the word? I'm drawing a blank here. Like a yearbook thing

when it's like the most this, the most of that. Yeah, superlatives. Yes. They love to throw in superlatives to make a story. You know, it's how you convince your editor. Throw a superlative out there. And now you see the Taliban.

They're just getting more and more involved with the trades with the traffickers. They're not just taxing. They're starting to do the trafficking as well. They're getting involved in the processing labs and the exporting, which up until then has been controlled by the trafficking networks. But a bunch of those major players get arrested by the U.S. and British forces,

so, you know, it creates an opening in the market. Says Peters, quote, powerful Taliban commanders, including Mullah Naim Barich in Helmand, stepped into that gap. Baruch represented a new generation of Taliban commanders, who were not simply collecting taxes on poppy crops and drug consignments, but actively meeting with district level officials and tribal leaders to set opium production quotas, organizing military campaigns to attack government-led eradication programs. and coordinating exports of drug consignments. Barrett and others like him gain increasing wealth and autonomy,

making the insurgency more fragmented, but also better funded and better armed. Meanwhile, opium and heroin is just pouring out of the country, wrecking havoc far and wide. The BBC had a 2010 piece on how the growth of heroin in Afghanistan led to huge growth in Russian heroin addicts since the northern Tajikistan route was also growing, and on the way to Europe, smuggers and dealers

found a willing market in Russia. In fact, Russia had long advocated tougher crackdowns on the poppy fields with the U.S., even doing joint exercises in 2010, making for some strange bedfellows. They did not up with the U.S. and Afghan anti-drug forces and captured 2,000 pounds

of high-grained heroin near Jalalabad. Wait, are the Afghans getting high on their own supply? Like, what are the stats there? Oh, yeah. I mean, for sure. It's shot up there. I mean, Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, just huge. huge, huge, like, growth in addicts.

Like, it's a tremendous problem, especially because, like, where are you going to find treatment centers there? You know, and I just mentioned Iran, not only was the U.S. allied with the Russians in the drug war, but with the Iranians, too, who were working with the U.N.

I actually had no idea the Iranian provinces bordering southern Afghanistan were such just, like, lawless drug warrior madmack situations. From a 2012 in New York Times article, quote, nearly a decade ago, it was an active battlefield,

where more than 3,000, thousand 900 Iranian border police officers lost their lives, fighting often better equipped Afghan and Pakistani drug gangs along nearly 600 miles of Iran's eastern border. Fucking 4,000, like that is nuts. In those days, smugglers with night vision equipment would roll over the border in all-terrain vehicles with heavy weapons, actively engaging Iranian law enforcement forces, whoever they found them. Security forces were at times dying by the dozen each day.

I mean, that is wild. Like insane. If I knew about it back then, I can tell you I'll be pitching a doc. That's for sure. So if this is like in Balochistan, let's talk about doing a film together there. Because like, oh my God, I've been trying to get out there for years. Like, do producers listen to this show? I mean, apart from the guys who still are shit advice.

Yeah. Besides people taking their ideas and then doing them with actual resources, I don't know. But if you're out there. Yeah. Do it with us. Like, you know, 90 grand. We'll make it happen. In 2012, again, Iran has seized.

using the highest amounts of opiates and heroin worldwide, which is crazy. Iranians were netting eight times more opium and three times more heroin in all other countries in the world combined. But the article details, the Iranians did make a lot of progress in cracking down, but not really with the most progressive methods. Said the article, quote, redrug traffickers, hundreds have been executed in recent years, making Iran the second leading country in the world in death sentences after China. Yeah, I mean, no one even knows how many people China kills, right? It's probably killing more than everyone else combined.

I mean, that's not even a joke. That's just a grim fact. I'm sure that I'm going to do more jokes further down. Danny's going to love. We're going to have to, once we try to make these Chinese deals, we're going to have to just edit that out like Disney and NBA style, you know? Just complete fealty. I'll do that.

I'm fine. I'll sell. I fucking do anything for that Chinese. You want? random episode about how Z is just like a great guy. Just like no theme whatsoever. You know who doesn't need drugs? Z.

That dude, nice guy. Great later. So, yeah, despite best efforts, well, I mean efforts.

The Taliban are capitalizing on heroin. The government allies and officials are capitalizing heroin. And it's all just flowing out into Iran, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, and further out into the world. It just, it can't be stopped.

And in the Aiken's 2014 Rolling Stone article, he says it represents 15% of the overall economy in Afghanistan, and here he is on Helmand Province during the harvest season. Across the province, hundreds of thousands of people were taking part in the largest opium harvest in Afghanistan's history. With a record 224,000 hectares under cultivation this year, the country produced an estimated 6,400 tons of opium, or around 90% of the world's supply. The drug is entwined with the highest levels of the Afghan government and the economy in a way that makes the cocaine business in Escobar-era Colombia look like a sideshow.

Moving on, by 2016, the Taliban are pretty much fully amassed in the trade, no longer just taxing or providing protection. I mean, they're a cartel. They're working on every stage of the chain. I mean, like, look at the Shadow Commander we just opened the episode with. And, you know, they've been profiting from the opening trade for years, decades, for taxing and everything else. But having them really move into every stage of the business, that's new, right?

They are basically rivaling the other major cartels in the region. and, like, they're, you know, it's kind of like FARC in a way. Like, they're a drug gang now. Quote from the Times, the new Taliban leader, Mullah Akhtar, Mohamed, again, this 2016, is at the pinnacle of a pyramid of tribal ishaqzai drug traffickers as amassed an immense personal fortune, according to United Nations monitors. That drug money changed the entire shape of the Taliban. With it, Mullah Monser bought off influential dissenters when he claimed the Supreme

leadership over the summer, according to senior Taliban commanders. You know, like all good drug lords are the plan, they want to control as much of the chain as possible because that's how you maximize profits. Why tax when you can smuggle? Why smuggle when you can produce? Why produce when you can refine? On and on and on.

Oh, man, this is such a head screw. Like, everyone on the take. I mean, like, listening to you say this actually back, it just makes you realize that the old maxim follow the money is just, it's the truest thing in the world. Like, it's not about, morals. It's not about religion. It's not about anything else. It's about making cash. Like,

I don't know. Maybe I'm getting too cynical. I mean, I think it's hard to see, to listen to this story and see what's going on there and not kind of get a bit cynical on the hopelessness of it all. But, you know, who knows? Look at the golden. Well, I guess now I was going to say, look at Burma. They shut down their heroin and they're doing it. Look at Burma. They did so well. Instead, they're just making tens of billions of dollars on heroin. I'm not heroin, on crystal meth with an extremely oppressive regime. So maybe there's no hope. Who knows?

Anyway, many of these networks, the ones who really worked the Taliban, these heroin gangs, they had their headquarters just over the border in Pakistan. And that's off limits to NATO and U.S. troops. So a lot of the smuggling networks, they're run by these close-knit families and tribes who, you know, they just can't be touched because of where they're located. As for some of the major players, this is from the 2009 Gretchen Peters' paper from the ISIP, quote, when most visualized the war in Afghanistan, they think of pitch battles and rugged mounted hamlets and IED attacks along remote dirt roads. It is important to also keep in mind the powerful

traders, smugglers, and money launders pulling the strings from the offices in Kedha, Karachi, and Dubai. The ambition of these businessmen is neither to spread Wahhabi Islam nor to create a Muslim caliphate. It is not even to eject U.S. troops from the Saudi Peninsula. The goal is to make money, lots of it. The UNOD and some counter-narcotics officials estimate that fewer than two dozen people control the vast majority of the Afghan opium market and profit most from it.

So yeah, I mean, that's the quote I was talking about earlier, that your cynicism too, that just kind of breaks it all down. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah. Also, I mean, kudos to you. You've gone from Alexander the Great

to Obama in the Afghan war in, I reckon like an hour and 20 minutes. That's pretty impressive. We're making good time. And yeah, I know a lot of this sounds convoluted, and that's because it really is. Like, I swear it's not my fault in writing this all up. There's just a lot.

There's a lot going on. Take the story of Haji Juma Khan, who is one of the most prolific smugglers ever, called in Afghanistan, called the Escobar of heroin, which, you know, I kind of feel like I read about three other guys called the Escobar of heroin every other month, but still. He's from a tribe that has lived in that tri-border area of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran for centuries,

some of the, like, harshest, most forbidding areas, landscapes ever. The tribe is Brahui, I'm definitely mispronouncing it, but we'll live. And everyone involved with him is from his tribe. He got big the first go-around when the Taliban is in charge in the 90s. You know, he's sending 100 car convoys through the Iranian desert, then through the Arabian sea on ships, landing on deserted beaches next to the United Arab immigrants, where they buried their cargo in the sand to be picked up later, which, I mean, that just sounds kind of fucking cool.

You know, it's old-school pirate stuff. Yeah. He's also maybe a high-ranking Taliban guy, maybe not. But the U.S. picks him up in 2001 in Kandahar, not realizing how big a fish they got, allegedly. He also trafficked weapons allegedly helped provide funding to, you know, some al-Qaeda operatives and the Taliban, had the mobile heroin labs going. You know, and the stuff he moved on the cargo ships from Karachi to the UAE. On the way back, he would bring weapons, unload them in Karachi, and just take them overland to the Taliban. Taliban troops help protect his drug shipments as they snake down into the southern Afghanistan areas.

But Afghan security officials say, you know, it was increasingly a blurring of line between whether they were insurgents or his personal sort of army and ruling sort of area. Now, he ends up getting let go in 2001. And some reports say he was let go because the U.S. didn't know who he was. But others say he agreed to be a paid informant for the CIA and was snitching on his Taliban and AQ collaborative. It's also alleged he wanted a role in the new government and was willing to give up the goods for amnesty. He even made a secret trip to the U.S. in 2006 to talk to the CIA and DIA and give them info, allegedly. His network as of 2007 included a force of 1,500 armed fighters. And the question is, like, was he Taliban? Was he funding them? Was he working with them?

Was he using them as bodyguards? Was he just, you know, providing all the same? Like, who knows? I honestly... I mean, what is the Taliban at this? point. Yeah. And again, the U.S. gets him again in 2008. After arranging what he thought was another clandestine meeting in Jakarta, they actually, you know, get him there, they bring him to the U.S. for trial. He was apparently also working with Karzai's half-brother, like they were kind of two

peas in a pot. I don't know why I'm using that phrase. Two P's in a pod. Whatever, man. Paying off border agents, paying off Intel in Pakistan and Iran. And on the payroll, the CIA this whole time giving up this info. his nephew takes over his role after he gets arrested.

He gets arrested the nephew in 2009 and turned over to Afghanistan, the government there, who let him go after 72 hours. Meanwhile, he stays locked up for 10 years and then it's quietly released in 2018. So it's just like,

I mean, that guy's a perfect summation. Like, what the hell is going on? Who is a lot allied with who? Who's what? Who's this? Who's doing whatever? It's just,

um, it's discombobulating, I think, would be the word I would use. Like the amount of random people, the Americans picked up and chucked in Gitmo at time as well. And it's worth like remembering that despite all of this stuff, Al-Zabahiri is still alive and kicking somewhere,

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Trump's in charge. And in terms of just like stupid gestures in the war on drugs in Afghanistan or in general, He's about to launch one of the dumbest. The U.S. decides to start targeting drug labs in Afghanistan and the networks with airstrikes. It's estimated that there were 500 labs in the country. But the labs, I mean, they're mostly just a couple of huts with stoos and barrels and precursor chemicals. Don't get me wrong. Like, you need serious chemists to do this stuff.

But these are cheaply made things that can easily be rebelled. And the U.S. is sending, like, I saw this mention. I'm not sure if it's 100%, but B-52s and F-35s to bomb these things, which is, you know, cost-benefits. benefit analysis. I don't know. It starts in November 2016, but by early 2019, they've kind of realized how foolish these things are and how much of a waste of the money it is, and they've given up. So what was that Moab bomb thing targeting? Like, I remember that in the news. I don't really know what that was supposed to be hitting. I don't know. I think it was like a mountain fortress. I don't think it was this. You know, and interestingly, 2017 is also when Afghanistan hits the all-time

high for opium production, an estimated 9,900 tons. The UN ODC estimates it was worth $1.4 billion in sales by farmers for 7% of the GDP. But again, when it comes to the money and the stats, it's always hard to suss out what's real and what's not. The UN has estimated that Taliban earned 400 million from heroin sales in 2018-19. And a May, 2021 U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan report quoted the U.S. official as estimating they make 60% of the revenue from opium. You know, others have said it's only earning 40 million a year and it's mostly from just taxes levied. I've seen experts who really focus on the market in general put it at between 20 million and 40 million.

It's really a hard thing to pin down. Yeah. It's like that seems like big and tiny at the same time. I mean, like the official GDP of Afghanistan is like $20 billion. So it isn't that much. But I guess I don't know. Like it just so hard to gauge these kind of black markets. Like what value are you putting on the drug, right?

Are you putting what it sold for in Afghanistan or what it goes for on the street? Yeah, exactly. What a gram goes for on the street, you're inflating the price upwards of a ton. I mean, what does it go for? Anyway, moving on. I feel like I've been saying that a lot this episode. For some more insight into who the traffickers in Afghanistan are, the UND-ODC, despite their potentially inflated numbers, they put out a huge paper in 2020 where they interviewed

41 traffickers of varying levels from small timers who just went from province to province inside the country to big-time international players. And it's a pretty monumental paper. And they found that most of the drug trafficking organizations or DTOs are linked by either family, tribe, or like locality kind of neighborhoods. Also interestingly, it seems like a lot of the traffickers collaborated with each other. Quote, many DTOs in Afghanistan worked within broader alliances, loosely coordinating and cooperating with a wider network of similar organizations in the supply chain. Interviewed traffickers were able to source opiates, precursor chemicals and access to clandestine laboratories from other DTOs across Afghanistan.

In some cases, it was a specific head of the wider network who coordinated the activities of several DTOs. It kind of seems like they get along a little better than your average Mexican and Colombian cartel, though. They also broke it down to where it's like, you know, small-scale traders, they buy from farmers, they sell to the medium traders who probably buy from a bunch of different small-scale traders, and they, in turn, move it to bigger traffickers. quote, in 2007, a UNODC survey estimated that the total number of mid and high-level traffickers

in Afghanistan was between 800 and 900, but was unable to determine the number of small-scale traffickers in the country. And all these big networks, they're made up of hundreds of mid-level and thousands of small-time traffickers who might just hop on a motorbike, you know, some nice price breakdowns as well. From Kabul to Canada, the transportation cost of one kilogram of heroin was reported as being $7,000 to $10,000 U.S. while to an unspecified country in Europe, the cost was between $4,000 and $6,000.

One of the interviewees who was a courier reported that he was paid $2 per gram to smuggle heroin to India, which is the equivalent to $2,000 per kilogram. So you kind of see how that plays out on what the money issues are. Yeah, I mean, how is all this controlled by a dozen guys? It seems so irregular.

Like, it's such a vast thing to get your head around as, like a business, I guess. The market finds a way, baby. You know, the market always finds away. Yeah, all right, cool. Supply chain, you know, that's a... Yeah, all right, Michelle Bachman.

Yeah, I don't know what supply chain means, but I do see it mentioned a lot these days when it comes to shipping stuff. I do know what it means. But yeah, you know, I'm going to yada, yada, yada, a lot of what's going on because we want to go to 2021 when the Taliban are back in charge. They've pledged to ban opium, which they...

I mean, you know, I don't like to offer predictions, but they probably won't. The LA Times quotes Felbaugh Brown again, it will be enormously difficult to achieve a poppy-free drug free Afghanistan. Even assuming that the country remains stable and doesn't disintegrate into civil war and assuming it has meaningful international support, it will still take decades to win Afghanistan off of poppy. I mean, I feel like Josh Brolin at the end of Sicario, right? It's like supply and demand.

Like, no matter what you do, you're going to sell the puppy. if people are taking heroin. It's tough. I mean, there were papers, I think in late 2000 or early 2010s about, you know, we talked about it last episode, but maybe getting Afghanistan involved

in the legal opium market as a way of just like countering the trade, although I'm sure black market stuff still makes more money, but providing a living to the farmers and sort of countering that in some way. No, there was loads of interesting stuff

about the turn of the 20th century where, like, opium was obviously a huge deal. And the Brits, who were the biggest importers of opium, they made, I think, Turkey and India and a couple of other countries, like, the only suppliers of white market stuff, right? There were reasons for that, though. You know, they already had a market.

Afghanistan didn't really have a market then. You know, they were... Turkey also did a really good effort in transitioning. You know, it wasn't like they were told to do... Like they got on the up and up the transition. They still have a market. Even like, you know, I think in Spain and other parts of Europe, there's legal opium done. There's a really interesting story.

I think about Tasmania and the legal opium market there that's kicked up in the past 20 years that involves some shadiness. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting because, you know, you need a ton of of that for all the morphine and all that that's going out there into the world for painkillers. But yeah, I want to add one more just underwereux. World Special into the mix, which, Sean, I mean, it's your favorite. Right now, there's a lot of talk of Afghanistan getting to the meth game. Oh, yeah, everyone loves meth. And if we don't get on that on T-shirt, we failed at this pod game. That's not a bad T-shirt idea.

We have the merch up on UnderworldPod.com. We have the don't Instagram Your Crimes, which is doing well. But I don't know where you could wear in everyone loves meth shirt. But I'm sure, I'm sure. I know a few folks in Oklahoma that would definitely wear that. I'm sure our fan base will find a way. So, a Fedra, which is a plant that's used to make meth, it grows wild in Afghanistan. And apparently the business is starting to boom.

Traffickers are already sending like free starter packs to Australia, according to a recent foreign policy article, which has, quote, a recent European Union-funded study found that Afghanistan has become a significant producer and supplier of relatively large quantities of low-cost effedrine and methamphetamine that could out rival or rival output of opiates. The report found that one district alone, Bacqua, in the northwestern province, of FARA, the population of 80,000 was potentially earning $240 million a year by processing a Fedra plants. There's your documentary. I mean, that number two just sounds insane. Like no one, no small district, I don't know.

I don't want to. Like, how, how can the whole industry be making like peanuts when that's making 240 million a year? Yeah, I mean, I'm just skeptical. I don't want to throw shade on these reports. I haven't read the full ones and the research they've known, but it just, it seems inflated. But yeah, those numbers sound insane. But yeah, that is a, that is the conclusion of our two-part opium, Afghanistan, Taliban, heroin, fun little series that, uh, that I threw together

relatively quickly. And I want to thank to, you know, our big sponsors here, Traneance, Will Wintercross, Chris Cusamano, Doug Pinderville, Jared Levy, Jeremy Rich, Matthew Cutler, Ross Clark, you know, for the donations they made who, without that, I probably would have given up doing this already. So thank you guys. And everyone else that contributes to the Patreon. It actually really does mean a lot. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. Patreon.com slash anewal podcast.

And I hate, it is extremely demeaning to keep begging for this. But we'll keep doing it until we're making that Honda Accord money. You can do it this week and I'll do it next week. Yeah, yeah, we'll trade off. So I don't know. Anyway, thank you guys again. See you all next week. This is Monsters is a true crime podcast.

podcast and YouTube channel where I tell the stories of the worst people on the planet. Though the stories of the victims are told, we focus on the monster who carried out the evil act. The show is split into seasons, and each season has a theme. In season one, we covered cases of philicide, which is the act of a parent killing their own child. In season two, we covered cases of people killing for love. We recently finished up season three where we covered cases of children. of parasite, which is the act of someone killing their parents. Tune in now as we start season four, where we dive into the minds of family annihilators,

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