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122 TALIBANper cent of the total Pakistan economy, was heavily subsidised by drugsmoney.It was only after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan that US andWestern pressure began to mount on Islamabad to curtail the productionof opium in Pakistan. Over the following decade (1989-99) someUS$100 million dollars of Western aid to combat narcotics was madeavailable to Pakistan. Poppy cultivation was drastically reduced from ahigh of 800 tons to 24 tons in 1997 and two tons by 1999. Crop substitutionprojects in the NWFP proved to be extremely successful. Neverthelessthe dealers and the transport mafia never went away and they receiveda major boost with the arrival of the Taliban and the subsequent increasein Afghan heroin production. Pakistan was no longer a heroin producer,but it became a major transport route for Taliban heroin exports. Thesame dealers, truck drivers, madrassa and government contacts and thearms, fuel and food supply chain that provided the Taliban with its suppliesalso funnelled drugs - just as the arms pipeline for the Mujaheddinhad done in the 1980s.Pakistan was slipping back into bad habits. In February 1998 the Clintonadministration accused Islamabad of doing little to curb productionand exports of heroin. The US refused to certify that Pakistan was curbingnarcotics production, but gave a waiver on the grounds of US nationalsecurity interests. 7 But the drugs problem was now no longer confined toPakistan and Afghanistan. As export routes multiplied in all directions,there was a dramatic increase in drug consumption across the region. By1998, 58 per cent of opiates was consumed within the region itself andonly 42 per cent was actually being exported. 8 Pakistan, which had noheroin addicts in 1979, had 650,000 addicts in 1986, three million by1992 and an estimated five million by 1999. Heroin addiction and drugsmoney fuelled law and order problems, unemployment and allowed ethnicand sectarian extremist groups to arm themselves.In Iran, the government admitted to having 1.2 million addicts in 1998,but senior officials in Tehran told me the figure was nearer three million -even though Iran had one of the toughest anti-narcotics policies in theworld, where anyone caught with a few ounces of heroin faced the deathpenalty automatically. 9 And Iran had tried much harder than Pakistan tokeep the drugs menace away. Since the 1980s Iran had lost 2,500 menfrom its security forces in military operations to stop convoys carryingdrugs from Afghanistan. After Iran closed its borders with Afghanistanduring the tensions with the Taliban in September 1998, Iranian securityforces caught five tons of heroin on the border in a few weeks. The Talibanfaced a major financial crisis as the closed border led to a drop inheroin exports and tax revenue.Heroin addiction was also increasing in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turk- IHIGH ON HEROIN: DRUGS AND THE TALIBAN ECONOMY 123menistan and Kyrgyzstan as they became part of the heroin export chain.In 1998 guards on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border confiscated one tonof opium and 200 kilograms of heroin. In January 1999, Tajikistan's PresidentImomali Rakhmanov told an international conference that drugswere being smuggled into his country from Afghanistan at the rate of oneton a day and addiction was increasing. Uzbekistan said there was an 11per cent increase of drugs from Afghanistan during 1998.I saw heroin being openly sold outside five-star hotels in Ashkhabad,the capital of Turkmenistan, and inside the hotels flashy Turkmen andRussian mafioso with their even flashier girlfriends, spoke of their trips tothe Afghan border 'to do business'. In 1997 two tons of heroin and 38tons of hashish were seized by the authorities. By 1999, Turkmenistan,with its conciliatory policy with the Taliban had become the principleroute of export for Afghan heroin with corrupt Turkmen officials benefitingfrom the trade. 10 President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan told me inJanuary 1999, that his country was now 'a major route for drugs traffickingand it is responsible for the growth of crime'. Akayev said the war againstdrugs could not be won until there was peace in Afghanistan and thecivil war had become the most destabilizing factor in the region. 11The heroin explosion emanating from Afghanistan is now affecting thepolitics and economics of the entire region. It is crippling societies, distortingthe economies of already fragile states and creating a new narcoelitewhich is at odds with the ever increasing poverty of the population.'Drugs is determining the politics of this region as never before,' said aWestern ambassador in Islamabad. 'We equate it now with other seriousthreats such as Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism and potential economiccollapse in some of these countries,' he added. 12This worsening situation prompted attempts by the international communityto talk to the Taliban. After six months of secret negotiationsUNDCP concluded an agreement with the Taliban in October 1997. TheTaliban agreed to eradicate poppy growing if the international communityprovided funds to help farmers with substitute crops. Pino Arlacchi, thehead of UNDCP asked for US$25 million from donors for a ten-yearprogramme to eliminate poppy fanning in areas controlled by the Taliban.'Afghan heroin supplies 80 per cent of Europe's supply of heroin and 50per cent of the world's supply of heroin. We are talking about eliminatinghalf the heroin of the world,' Arlacchi said enthusiastically. 13 UNDCPsaid it would introduce new cash crops, improve irrigation, build newfactories and pay for law enforcement.But the agreement was never implemented by the Taliban and afterthe pull-out of UN agencies from Afghanistan in 1998, it simply fellapart. Six months later Arlacchi was less optimistic when he told me,'Afghanistan is one of the most difficult and crucial parts of the world but