From Islamic Warriors to Drug Lords: The Evolution of the Taliban Insurgency

Farhana Schmidt

Mediterranean Quarterly, Volume 21, Number 2, Spring 2010, pp. 61-77 (Article) Published by Duke University Press

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From Islamic Warriors to Drug Lords: The Evolution of the Taliban Insurgency Farhana Schmidt

Afghanistan is a land where Zoroastrianism, Manichaeanism, and Buddhism took turns at flourishing as a long line of conquerors, warlords, preachers, saints, and philosophers swept through this corridor of Asia, destroying old religions to bring in new ones. The Taliban hold the distinction of being the latest in the line of these torchbearers. Once described by Lord Curzon as the cockpit of Asia, Afghanistan is once again at the epicenter of conflict.1 Yet, according to Peter Bergen, Afghanistan is more than a cobbled-together agglomeration of warring tribes; it is a state that dates back to the 1747 Durrani Empire. Hence, it is not the sense of nationhood that is missing here, but rather, of a strong central statehood.2 Nevertheless, unmistakably, Afghanistan is a shell of the country that it once was. In the 1970s, Afghanistan was a country that enjoyed internal stability. Its majestic mountains, relics of bygone civilizations, beautiful gardens, and a mix of unusual people drew tourists from near and far.3 Yet it was never a modern state. Francis Fukuyama contends that even up to the 1970s, a time when its monarchy was still in place, Afghanistan was a tribal confederation with nominal state penetration beyond Kabul.4 Years of misrule by the

1. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 7, 9. 2. Peter Bergen, What Should We Do Now? Give It Time, Time Magazine, 5 October 2009. 3. Ibid. 4. Francis Fukuyama, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). Farhana Schmidt is a graduate student in the diplomacy program of Norwich University, Vermont.
Mediterranean Quarterly 21:2 DOI 10.1215/10474552-2010-005 Copyright 2010 by Mediterranean Affairs, Inc.

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Soviets, which began with a procommunist coup in 1978 followed by civil war, have robbed this land of nearly every tangible form of infrastructure. In the aftermath of the departure of Soviet troops, mujahideen leaders, in Kandahar alone, sold off everything, including telephone poles, wires, factories, road rollers, and even young boys and girls, to merchants who were willing to pay the right price. By the time the Taliban emerged onto the landscape, Afghanistan was in tatters, to say the least. Guided by a messianic and puritanical Islam, the Taliban that emerged between 1979 and 1994 opposed modernism even though it did not shy away from using automatic weapons, mobile phones, and pick-up trucks.5 Hence, following the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, state building is assuredly an intimidating task. In short, Afghanistan is not a reconstruction projectit is a construction project.6 A second round of elections has reinstalled the government of Hamid Karzai. As President Karzais administration carefully wraps itself back into the shawl of democracy, its power is contested by various warlords around the country, while his governments legitimacy is questioned by pockets of the Taliban.7 The trouble is, the Taliban of today is an ominous incarnation of the original Taliban of the 1990s, which veteran Taliban watchers can hardly recognize. Among these observers is ten-year veteran Gretchen Peters, who considers whether it is even appropriate to call the new Taliban the Taliban at all. Peters contends that todays Talibs are a fragmented, transnational force devoid of many of the groups prior characteristics and political aspirations. Everyone from gangland-type fighters, fighters loyal to various warlords, and those involved in kidnapping and racketeering to general rabble rousers label themselves as the Taliban.8 This makes sorting out exactly who is who a difficult task. Nevertheless, one thing is abundantly clear: the active participation of the Taliban has aided and abetted opium cultivation on a scale unmatched

5. Rashid, 21, 93. 6. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Afghanistans Narco War: Breaking The Link Between Drug Traffickers and Insurgents, 111th Cong., 1st sess., August 2009, 2. 7. Fukuyama, 95. 8. Gretchen Peters, Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2009), 104.

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to anything Afghanistan has produced in the past. For example, in 1999 Afghanistan produced forty-five hundred tons of opium, which is fifteen times the output of the preceding twenty years.9 The resulting drug production labs and drug trafficking have produced an economic miracle in a land that is, without doubt, one of the worlds most remote and backward regions.10 Today, Afghanistan is the worlds clear leader in opium production, producing 92 percent of the worlds supply.11 This is important when one considers that, in Afghanistan, transportation networks and infrastructure such as freight trains have been virtually nonexistent for at least a quarter of a century.12 Moreover, illiteracy is widespread. It is no small achievement on the part of the drug traffickers of the Golden Crescent and their Taliban partners that they have taken an agricultural productalbeit an illegal oneand managed to integrate it into the global economy.13 Although the Taliban do not mastermind the drug trade per se, it is clear that they benefit from it financially and use revenues generated by it to purchase new weapons, sponsor new Madrassas in Pakistan to pick up a fresh crop of new recruits, and barter for cars and all manner of consumer goods, including houses. Since the year 2000, this business partnership with trafficking cartels has become even deeper.14 A lack of confidence and trust in the Afghan government also gives opium an added value. Hermann Kreutzmann observes, Opium is not only a commodity, but also a currency at the same time.15 Hence, Papaver soniferum, or poppy, is the lifeblood of the Talibans insurgency in Afghanistan. Once the Talibans financial arteries linked to the poppy are cut off, it will experience a major blow to its organization, unless it morphs into an entirely new animal.

9. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 4. 10. Peters, 144. 11. Letizia Paoli, Victoria A. Greenfield, and Peter Reuter, The World Heroin Market: Can Supply Be Cut? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) 43. Also see Peters, 15. 12. Peters, 144. 13. Ibid. 14. Claire Colley, The Books Interview: Gretchen Peters, New Statesman, 19 October 2009, 51. Also see Peters, 168. 15. Hermann Kreutzmann, Afghanistan and the Opium World Market: Poppy Production and Trade, Iranian Studies 40, no. 5 (December 2007): 620.

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In the Sea of Opiates, Each Village Is a Campaign Imagine it is 2008 in a country where 12 percent of the population lives off the opiates trade, which makes up 30 percent of its gross domestic product. Notices from the Taliban abound on the doors of Afghanistans mosques, telling farmers not to grow any opium for 2009, but these notices have little to do with finding religion. They have a lot more to do with manipulating opium prices, which had seen a downward spiral over the preceding four years, culminating in a 22 percent dip between 2007 and 2008, due to supply that is in excess of anything the country has ever before produced. For its part, the Taliban have been stockpiling an estimated eight thousand tons of opium, enough to last for an easy two years just in case the Obama administration decides to eradicate the poppy fields. Wiping Afghanistan clean of its poppy slate would yield an even greater bonanza for the opiates industry as prices would finally climb back up in the face of low supplies. It is a lesson in economics that the Taliban know well, as it used the same strategy in the year 2000 with fantastic returns.16 In a country that has not had a legal agricultural economy to speak of for the past thirty years, one wonders how provinces like Helmand in the south, which used to be the primary producer of flowers, fruits, and vegetables, became the primary producer of that gummy substance worth its weight in gold, as professional cooks transform it into morphine and then, finally, into heroin.17 The answer lies in the lessons the Taliban have learned from their predecessors, the mujahideen. In the 1980s, the mujahideen exacted payments from local farmers through taxation, and tolls from traders at checkpoints marked carefully along key routes.18 They also engaged in opiate cultivation and in the manufacture of heroin.19 While some mujahideen participated in the cultivation of opium because they were simply following in the footsteps of their family elders, others became involved having derived smuggling skills as part of the Afghan resistance movement during
16. Peters, 215, 216, 237, 238. 17. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), World Drug Report 2009 (Vienna: UNODC, 2009), 40, www.unodc.org/unodc/data-and-analysis/WDR.html. 18. Paoli, Greenfield, and Reuter, 122. 19. Ibid., 123. 20. Rashid, 122.

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Soviet rule.20 The pipeline of arms smuggled into Afghanistan and drugs smuggled out provided a logistics system that was not too difficult to reformat for the opiates industry once the Soviets had left. The most entrepreneurial among the mujahideen involved in the opiates trade was Gulbuddin Hikmatyar and his Hizb-I-Islami party. Hikmatyar held the distinction of being the recipient of 50 percent of the Central Intelligence Agencys aid to the Afghan resistance movement of the 1980s. Another key player was Mullah Nasim Akhmadzada and his Harakat party. Akhmadzada grew to become a powerful warlord, having spearheaded poppy cultivation in Helmand province on the scale that it has retained ever since.21 When one considers that a mere 3.3 percent of Afghanistans cultivated land is devoted to growing poppy, Helmand provinces productivity in poppy farming stands out. In 2005 it produced as much as one-quarter of the total national production of poppy, with 26,500 hectares devoted to the task. 22 Interestingly enough, of the thirty-four provinces that made up Afghanistan as of April 2009 Helmand province had the highest percentage of territory controlled by the Taliban, almost 60 percent of it.23 Indicative of the Talibans drive to protect opiate cultivation from disruptive eradication teams, however, there has been a recent shift in the location of fields used to grow poppy. Farmers are now moving to more remote locations outside of the top five opium producing provinces. Traditionally these have been Helmand, Kandahar, Balkh, Farah, and Badakhshan.24 On the streets of London, a gram of heroin worth three dollars in Kabul is valued at one hundred dollars, illustrating the lucrative draw to Afghanistan for trafficking cartels.25 Each border crossing means a markup many times over. According to a recent report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Taliban use dollars from drugs to buy arms, pay fighters, and build
21. Paoli, Greenfield, and Reuter, 1234. 22. Kreutzmann, 611. 23. Peter Bergen, Helmand: Bombs, Drugs, and the Taliban, Foreign Policy Online and the AFPAK Channel, 9 September 2009, afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/09/09/helmand _bombs_drugs_and_the_taliban. 24. Kreutzmann, 611. 25. UNODC Reveals Devastating Impact of Afghan Opium, UNODC press release, 21 October 2009, www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2009/october/unodc-reveals-devastating-impact-of -afghan-opium-.html.

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improvised explosive devices (IEDs).26 That capacity to pay for the building and stockpiling of IEDs is one that cannot be ignored, since IEDs constituted 65 percent of all American combat-related deaths in Iraq and 50 percent of all nonfatal injuries in 2005.27 At the heart of the problem are the enormous drug profits, in addition to the ancillary taxes and protection money, that fuel the Taliban.28 At the farm gate, the Taliban charge a 10 percent tithe called ushr while, at the same time, Taliban soldiers work in the poppy fields to augment their income. In addition, the small traders pay the Talibs an additional gratuity, as do the truckers who haul the opium to the border for entry into Pakistan, Iran, and Tajikistan. By far, the largest payoff comes from the drug-trafficking organizations that pay the Talibans shura council directly, in the border city of Quetta, Pakistan.29 The concentric circle of actors involved in the opiates industry in Afghanistan begins at the center, with large-scale specialist traffickers, moving outward to middle-level traffickers, who are mostly shopkeepers selling imported goods such as motorbikes. On the outermost periphery are small or itinerant traffickers, who are mostly teachers, government employees, and smaller vendors selling commodities. Insofar as the frequency of trade is concerned, the large-scale specialist traffickers buy opium daily and ship it out to border regions. However, for the mid-level and small-scale traffickers, business is seasonal and is usually conducted from regional bazaars.30 In partnership with the new Afghan narco-cartels, the Talibs cater to at least 15 million addicts throughout the world, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that the value of heroin worldwide is $65 billion. Ten years ago, the Talibans income from taxing the opium trade was estimated to be between $75 million and $100 million per year. Since 2005, that number has climbed to an estimated $90 million and $160 million.31 Further, through the salam system, the Talibs augment their fund26. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 1. 27. Bergen. 28. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 3. 29. Ibid., 9. 30. Paoli, Greenfield, and Reuter, 1212. 31. UNODC Reveals.

Schmidt: From Islamic Warriors to Drug Lords 67

ing by purchasing crops at planting time, well in advance of the harvest. In this way, poor farmers can feed and house their families through the winter months. The only problem is that the farmers end up owing more than the value of their harvests. As each year passes, with enormous interest rates that would be considered extortionist in the West, the farmers find themselves increasingly unable to escape the yoke of debt. There are swaths of tragic stories about daughters having been sold off in order to pay old debts.32 It is little wonder that the Taliban can afford to pay their rank-and-file soldiers three hundred dollars per month, whereas an Afghan soldier/policeman would be one of the fortunate few if he were paid one hundred dollars.33 Unsurprisingly, according to Anthony Maria Costa, the head of UNODC, the line between ideology and greed has been clearly obfuscated by the vast profits that the new narco-cartels of Afghanistan are reaping.34 Yet the Talibs are told by their teachers and peers that its legitimate, or halal, to sell to non-Muslims, whom they refer to as kafirs, because it is considered an act of war against those who hurt them.35 According to Abdul Ghaus Rasoolzai, head of antinarcotics in eastern Afghanistan, the Talibans argument has currency because the weapon of drugs does not make a noise. The victim does not bleed and leaves no trace of the killer.36 According to Abdul Rashid, former head of the old Talibans antidrug force, opium is permissible because it is consumed by unbelievers, kafirs, in the West and not by Muslims or Afghans.37 However, the story the Talibs tell each other in order to convince themselves that they are doing something bad to the kafirs neglects the likes of twenty-eight-year-old Khord Agha. Just as soon as the social worker at one of Afghanistans forty-five drug treatment clinics hands him a new hypodermic needle, he looks for a fresh vein in which to inject heroin. Agha is emblematic of the spiraling rates of heroin addiction in Afghanistan; UN monitors and Afghani officials estimate that the number of addicts is more than
32. Peters, 118. 33. Bergen. 34. UNODC Reveals. 35. Peters, 113. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid.

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1.3 million.38 Between 1996 and 2000, the number of addicts in Pakistan stood at 0.68 million between the ages of 15 and 64. For the same period in Iran, addicts numbered 1.12 million, and in Bangladesh the number was 0.24 million.39 Each of these countries has an overwhelmingly Muslim population. For his part, Agha picked up his habit while working on a farm in Iran. First he used heroin to relax, but it was not long before he was using it to get through the day, a sure sign that addiction had claimed his future. Aamer Madhani writes that, until it was closed down, the former Russian Cultural Center in Kabul was the equivalent to a heroin McDonalds, as sixteen hundred addicts walked in and out of its doors per day, and on any given day, it was also the mortuary for two to four dead young Afghan men.40 While the reasons for resorting to heroin vary from crushing poverty and helplessness to pain relief, the reason for drug trafficking is as old as money. In 2008, there were 366,500 Afghan families involved in poppy cultivation, and the gross income of poppy farmers was estimated at $730 million, a decrease from the previous year, when total farm income was estimated to be no less than $1 billion.41 Nonetheless, it still represents a sizable amount of income. Most important, this income is a good indicator of just how much the Taliban collects from within their borders alone. It is estimated that between 30 to 50 percent of the Talibans revenue stream comes from the opiates industry inside Afghanistan.42 Thanks to the enormity of these assets, since 2005 the Taliban have made a comeback better than any rock star could hope for. Governing large portions of the southern and eastern provinces, they were moving their brand of violence northward as of 2007.43 Finally, there is no shortage of places to hide the loot. Most drug dealers in Afghanistan simply barter their opium for commodities like cars, electronic goods, and construction equipment. A walk down Smugglers Creek in Dubai will give an eye-witness account of the dhows weighted down with all manner of goods heading off to the port city of Karachi, Pakistan, to find its way
38. Aamer Madhani, Army of Addicts Opens Another Front in the War: Heroin Snares Thousands in Afghanistan, USA Today, 18 September 2009, final edition. 39. Paoli, Greenfield, and Reuter, 97. 40. Madhani. 41. UNODC, World Drug Report 2009, 193. 42. Paoli, Greenfield, and Reuter, 129. 43. Ibid.

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to the chaotic Chaman border crossing. As an alternative, the Talibs can set up shell companies in Dubai for less than $20,000 and funnel drug revenues into the UAE real estate market to launder it clean. Of course there is always the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE), which remains unregulated. Interestingly enough, the KSE has grown by an unprecedented 200 percent, despite repeated market collapses. In 2006, $120 billion was pumped through the KSE while Pakistans entire economy totaled about $130 billion.44 If none of these market outlets suit the Talibs, there is always the hawala system. The hawala money transfer market is cheap, fast, easy, and fully penetrated by criminal and terror networks. Its chief characteristic is that it is run based on trust. For example, when migrant workers in Dubai need to send one hundred thousand dollars worth of salary back home to India, all they need to do is to contact a hawala agent. All the agent has to do is send a quick text message from his or her phone, and the money is immediately available to families in India. Often times, all that is needed is a number used on the agents bank note as a confirmation number for people to pick up the cash in India. Money never has to cross any borders or computers. In Helmand province and Kandahar, fifty-four hawaladars (agents and dealers) have moved in excess of $1 billion using this system.45 Afghanistan: A State Reborn? Following the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, on 22 December 2001 the Bonn Agreement established the parameters for a government in Afghanistan. The loya jirga comprising fifteen hundred participants selected by village elders and others, convened in Kabul in 2002 and duly elected Hamid Karzai as its interim president.46 In the 2004 elections, President Karzai emerged as the candidate of choice and was formally elected to office. Today, two elections later, the first disputed and the second undisputed, President Karzai is back in power. Yet, according to Gretchen Peters, even though the Taliban
44. Peters, 16975. 45. Ibid., 16970. 46. James Dobbins, John G. McGinn, Keith Crane, Seth G. Jones, Rollie Lal, Andrew Rathmell, Rachel M. Swanger, and Anga R. Timilsina, Americas Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2003), 143.

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made hundreds of millions from the drug trade, one thing almost everyone interviewed for [her] project agreed on was that crooked members of Hamid Karzais administration are earning even more.47 The main locus for this corruption appears to be the Ministry of the Interior, headed by General Mohammed Daud, which has been responsible for the countrys counternarcotics program since 2002.48 Similar to the Taliban system of complex kickbacks, top police officials can expect to kickback $40,000 per month all the way upstairs to maintain themselves in a job. The same is true of governorships, customs, and other sought after jobs with a higher potential for extra income on the side. Often times an entire district has been sold off to the Taliban active in the drug trade by heads of police who look the other way. Meanwhile, a UN study points to President Karzais half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, as the man at the top of the stairs Peters alludes to. According to Peters, Ahmed Karzai has power simply because he has the final say in who gets what position.49 Further, in talks off the record, US intelligence officials say that they have been aware of Ahmed Karzais involvement with the opiates industry since 2005, something North Atlantic Treaty Organization soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan corroborate.50 Hence, if you are known by the company you keep, then it might be helpful to give a second thought to exactly who is the administration. Jordana Timerman and David Kenner point to a tangled web of links in the Karzai administration beyond those that are rumored to surround the presidents half-brother. For example, according to Human Rights Watch, the man tapped to be one of the two vice-presidents in the Karzai administration is reported to have issued threats to up-and-coming political parties, as well as their membership, should they seek to contest the governments power. He is identified as Muhammed Qasim Fahim.51 In another example, General Abdul
47. Peters, 134. 48. Paoli, Greenfield, and Reuter, 129. 49. Peters, 1367. 50. James A. Nathan, The Folly of Afghan Opium Eradication, USA Today Magazine, March 2009, 29. Also see Peters, 136. 51. Jordana Timerman and David Kenner, Karzais Cronies: Meet the Unsavory Characters Surrounding the Afghan President and His New Government, Foreign Policy Online, 19 November 2009, www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/19/karzais_cronies.

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Rashid Dostum, the recently reinstated Afghan Army chief of staff, who had been exiled in Turkey for beating up a political opponent at gun point, is widely known to have ordered Taliban militants to be transported to prison in closed metal shipping containers, a trip that caused fifteen of them to suffocate. Their bodies have not yet been found.52 In one final example, James A. Nathan writes that President Karzais anticorruption tsar is Izzatullah Wasti, a man who has served four years in prison in the United States for dealing in heroin at a Las Vegas hotel.53 So, how did Afghanistan get here? According to the report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, it got there by putting local and regional warlords and rag-tag militia commanders on the CIA payroll with the aim to blunt the Taliban insurgency.54 This clearly backfired, as those same warlords and militia men have used their alliance with the United States as political leverage to gain access to choice senior positions within the Afghan government, resulting in the nexus between the opiates industry and legitimate authority.55 In the end, the reemergence of the Afghan state has done little to weaken the illegal opiates industry. Instead, it has promoted a process of consolidation within it. What has emerged is a criminal underworld that is very powerful and duly linked to high-ranking state officials through bribes and patronage. These officialsmen and one womanconstitute a corrupt upper world, which provides protection to opium producers and traffickers alike. Hence, the very process of state-building is challenged by their direct and indirect involvement in the booming opiates industry.56 Since the installation of the loya jirga in 2001, what has reemerged is the state, but, unfortunately, what has also emerged is another actor in the drug trade. It remains to be seen just how far those involved in the drug trade will go to maintain the status quo.

52. Ibid. 53. Nathan, 29. 54. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 4. 55. Ibid. 56. Paoli, Greenfield, and Reuter, 130.

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The Taliban: From a Spider to a Starfish The spider and the starfish both appear to have a number of legs coming out of one body, but that is where the similarity ends. In the case of the spider, what you see is a clear heads head and a legs leg. However, a starfish is entirely different from a spider because the head is not even in charge of anything. In fact, a starfish does not even have a head. If a starfish is cut in half, it does not die. Instead, what you get are two starfish. The long-armed Linckia starfish can even replicate itself from just one piece of an arm. Unlike the spider, having no brain to give the affirmative on anything, the starfish functions as a decentralized network.57 For the starfish to move one arm, all the other arms have to convince each other that its a good idea. The lesson here is that its easy to mistake a spider for a starfish.58 Could it be that the United States has mistaken the new Taliban, a decentralized starfish organization, for the highly centralized spider type of organization it once was? Perhaps this analogy helps to explain why it is that everyone is having so much trouble defining and categorizing the Taliban today. Most important, this analogy helps to explain how the Taliban have morphed themselves into a membership of insurgents who compensate their removal from formal political power with economic power, thereby keeping themselves very much alive by having integrated themselves vertically in the drug trade over the past five years.59 Having lived among the Taliban in Kandahar for a period of eighteen months, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn write, The Taliban [are an] amorphous force that everybody has so much trouble defining, but with whom, at an individual level, there seems to be plenty of room to sit and do business.60 This observation stands in profound contrast to Ahmed Rashids observation about the Taliban in the 1990s. Who were the Taliban back then? Quite simply, they were the children of jihad, who were deeply
57. Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations (New York: Penguin Group, 2006), 34. 58. Ibid., 335. 59. Colley, 51. 60. Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, See You Soon, if Were Still Alive, Foreign Policy Online, November/December 2009, www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/16/see_you _soon_if_we_re_still_alive.

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troubled by their mujahideen heroes who had plunged themselves, headlong, into criminal activity as if there were no tomorrow. The Talibs who surrounded Mullah Omar back then thought of themselves as cleansers and purifiers of a guerrilla war that went desperately wrong and as the new hope for an Islamic life hitherto compromised by excess and depravity.61 In the infancy of the Taliban movement, Mullah Omar himself demanded neither reward nor credit for bringing a Robin Hood style of justice. He only wanted people to establish an Islamic system of justice. In the 1990s, the Taliban were a highly centralized organization akin to a spider. Between 1994 and the capture of Kabul in 1996, the Taliban leadership became secretive, dictatorial, highly centralized in decision-making and inaccessible to the larger apparatus of field commanders and junior officers alike. In addition, their leader, Mullah Omar, enjoyed playing musical chairs, as governors of various provinces were sent off to battle at a moments notice with no return date in sight, while the governance of the province lay limpid, awaiting important decisions. This was the mullahs way to ensure that no one would gain a foothold against his popularity, since this might pose a threat further down the road. The Taliban of old were exclusivists who rejected tribal structures and customs in favor of a radicalized political ideology.62 Who are they now? Even though Mullah Omar remains the Talibans de facto leader, he is only the leader of the core group of Talibs.63 Increasingly, the broader Taliban resemble a starfish organization much more so than a spider, as many key Afghan traffickers have either become politicians or are tightly linked to former warlords who have become full-time politicians.64 Underscoring this change is the fact that, whereas before, the Taliban were providing physical protection to traffickers, as politicians, they are now providing political protection.65 In table 1 are the key traits that make up a starfish organization, by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, applied here to the new Taliban.66 Table 2 and table 3 illustrate the evolution of the Taliban from the 1990s to today over these same ten traits.
61. Rashid, 23. 62. Ibid., 19, 25, 98, 99, 1001. 63. Peters, 104. 64. Paoli, Greenfield, and Reuter, 128. 65. Ibid., 129. 66. The tables are the authors, based on Brafman and Beckstrom.

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Table 1 The Starfish Organization of the Taliban

Traits of a Starfish Organization The Taliban Today There is no one in charge  Mullah Omar is in charge only of the core group There are no headquarters  The Taliban conduct business from a number of different places If you thump it on the head, it survives  Someone is always waiting to pick up where the other leader left offlikely true since inception, but unequivocally true today There is an amorphous division of roles  Roles of individuals and groups are constantly in flux If you take out a unit, the organization The Taliban still operates with hierarchies, is unharmed  but they are now quite distributed and only loosely affiliated with any central hierarchy Knowledge and power are distributed  The field commanders, local drug lords, and regional leaders all run their own show at the local and regional level The organization is flexible  The Taliban now send people on fundraisers to the Middle East to buffet their finances from a dip in the opiates industry Units are self-funded  Each local and regional warlord, down to small traffickers, finance their own kitty You cannot count the participants  Since inception, the Taliban can blend in easily with the local population Working groups communicate with each There is no central communications other directly  backbone, and any remnant of central command is now in hiding, so communication is indirect and by a variety of methods

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Table 2 Evolution of the Taliban from a Spider to a Starfish Organization: Early 1990s
Spider Organization Starfish Organization There is someone in charge X There is no one in charge There are headquarters X There are no headquarters If you thump it on the head, it dies X  If you thump it on the head, it survives There is a clear division of roles X  There is an amorphous division of roles If you take out a unit, the organization X If you take out a unit, the is harmed organization is unharmed Knowledge and power are concentrated X  Knowledge and power are distributed The organization is rigid X The organization is flexible Units are funded by the organization X Units are self-funded You can count the participants X You cannot count the participants Working groups communicate through X Working groups communicate with intermediaries each other directly Centralization 7 3 Decentralization

Table 3 Evolution of the Taliban from a Spider to a Starfish Organization: 2010

Spider Organization There is someone in charge There are headquarters If you thump it on the head, it dies Starfish Organization X There is no one in charge X There are no headquarters X  If you thump it on the head, it survives There is a clear division of roles X  There is an amorphous division of roles If you take out a unit, the organization X If you take out a unit, the is harmed organization is unharmed Knowledge and power are concentrated X  Knowledge and power are distributed The organization is rigid X The organization is flexible Units are funded by the organization X Units are self-funded You can count the participants X You cannot count the participants Working groups communicate through X Working groups communicate with intermediaries each other directly Centralization 0 10 Decentralization

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Conclusion Letizia Paoli writes that there would be no opiate production and trafficking without consumption, and no opiate consumption without production and trafficking.67 Any discussion about the war on terror in Afghanistan is inseparable from a discourse on the war on drugs. Gone are the days of the puritanical ideological Islamic warriors who brandished a Robin Hood style of justice, asking for nothing in return. Today, the Talibs are conducting brisk business, not in the name of Allah but rather in the name of the almighty US dollar.68 Taliban insurgents have managed to blend their activities and objectives into a comfortable arrangement with drug traffickers on a scale and level of complexity that appears to have had a measure of significant success in terms of their ability to continue to stage a strong fight against the efforts of the US and coalition forces over the course of the preceding eight years. They have morphed themselves to resemble a starfish organization rather than the spider organization of their early days, which allows them to regenerate themselves despite being clobbered over the head very hard by Western military forces. Afghanistan has been without a functional central bank, treasury, tax collection system, customs control, civil service, and judicial system for more than a quarter of a century. Its cash economy, to the detriment of its population, has allowed the Taliban to step in and run roughshod over this state to the point that it is barely recognizable as one. The numbers tell a gloomy story, as an estimated 60 to 80 percent of the population live on less than a dollar a day.69 As a country, it has the distinction of being ranked 169th out of 174 countries in the UNs Human Development Index. Sadly, life expectancy here is barely longer than forty years, and half of Afghani children under five years of age are malnourished.70 For many in the West, Afghanistan is a backwater state that simply cannot escape the clutches of bearded lunatics who do their dirty business from within caves under the banner of a perverted Islam. By contrast, for observ67. Paoli, Greenfield, and Reuter, 41. 68. Peters, 15. 69. Dobbins et al., 144. 70. Ibid.

Schmidt: From Islamic Warriors to Drug Lords 77

ers like Gretchen Peters, these men and their networks better resemble the New Jersey and New York crime families depicted in the television program The Sopranos. One should recall that Italys mafia began first as an insurgency in Sicily, and it was only after the passage of time that it developed into a full-time organization committed to crime.71 Peters, a veteran observer of the business activities of the Taliban, has the following advice: Treat each village as its own campaign. Start small. Think big.72 The only trouble is that, while the Taliban have time on their side, the United States and members of the international coalition of forces have only their watches. For now, according to a recent report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, fifty top drug dealers are slated for kill or capture. If the Taliban has truly morphed into a starfish organization, then it should come as no surprise when a new batch of fifty drug lords is slated for kill or capture. The traits of a decentralized organization are flexibility, shared power, and ambiguity.73 Are some of these traits not already apparent among the drug traffickers and the Talibs? Poppy is the lifeblood of the Talibans insurgency in Afghanistan. Once the Talibans financial arteries linked to the poppy are cut off, it is more than likely to cause a major blow to the organization. However, attempting to do so may ironically make the Taliban even stronger by increasing poppy revenue because of dramatically reduced poppy supply. Also, since the Taliban increasingly resemble a starfish organization, the Taliban could easily morph into an entirely new animal to regenerate itself anew, if they have not done so already, even if the most idealistic objective of poppy eradication is achieved.

71. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 9. 72. Peters, 238. 73. Brafman and Beckstrom, 21.