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124 ~ TALIBANa wider political settlement is needed before drugs production can be becontrolled.' 14 The record of wealthy countries supporting UNDCP initiativeswas not particularly hopeful either. Between 1993 and 1997 UNDCPhad asked for US$16.4 million from international donors for antinarcoticswork in Afghanistan and received only half that amount.The taxes on opium exports became the mainstay of Taliban incomeand their war economy. In 1995 UNDCP estimated that Pakistan-Afghanistan drugs exports were earning some 50 billion rupees (US$1.35billion) a year. By 1998 heroin exports had doubled in value to US$3billion. Drugs money funded the weapons, ammunition and fuel for thewar. It provided food and clothes for the soldiers and paid the salaries,transport and perks that the Taliban leadership allowed its fighters. Theonly thing that can be said in the Taliban's favour was that unlike in thepast, this income did not appear to line the pockets of their leaders, asthey continued to live extremely frugal lives. But it made the Afghan andPakistani traffickers extremely rich.Alongside the drugs trade, the traditional Afghan smuggling trade fromPakistan and now the Gulf states, expanded under the Taliban and createdeconomic havoc for neighbouring states. The Afghan Transit Trade(ATT), described in detail in Chapter 15, is the largest source of officialrevenue for the Taliban and generates an estimated US$3 billion annuallyfor the Afghan economy. Customs officials in Kandahar, Kabul and Heratrefuse to disclose their daily earnings but with some 300 trucks a daypassing through Kandahar on their way to Iran and Central Asia viaHerat and another 200 trucks passing through Jalalabad and Kabul to thenorth, daily earnings are considerable. The illegal trade in consumergoods, food and fuel through Afghanistan is crippling industries, reducingstate revenues and creating periodic food shortages in all neigbouringstates - affecting their economies in a way that was never the case duringthe jihad.Taliban customs revenues from the smuggling trade are channelledthrough the State Bank of Afghanistan which is trying to set up branchesin all provincial capitals. But there is no book-keeping to show whatmoney comes in and where it goes. These 'official' revenues do notaccount for the war budget which is accumulated and spent directly byMullah Omar in Kandahar and is derived from drugs income, aid fromPakistan and Saudi Arabia and other donations. 'We have revenues fromcustoms, mining and zakat, but there are some other sources of incomefor the war effort that do not come through the State Bank of Afghanistan,'admitted Maulvi Arifullah Arif, the Deputy Minister of Finance. 15With the war being run directly by Mullah Omar from his tin trunksstuffed full of money, which he keeps under his bed, making a nationalbudget is next to impossible - even if the expertise was available, whichHIGH ON HEROIN: DRUGS AND THE TALIBAN ECONOMY ~ 125it is not. The Finance Ministry has no qualified economist or banker.The Minister and his deputies are mullahs with a madrassa education andknowledgeable bureaucrats were purged. The paucity of official funds canbe judged by the fact that in 1997 the Finance Ministry had set a budgetof the equivalent of US$100,000 for the entire country's administrationand development programmes for the Afghan financial year - February1997-January 1998. In fact this amount just covered salaries for officials.Some of the mullah traders within the Taliban are trying to encourageindustry and foreign investment, but there appears to be no serious supportfrom the Taliban leadership for these efforts. 'We want to developAfghanistan as a modern state and we have enormous mineral, oil andgas resources which should interest foreign investors,' said Maulvi AhmedJan, the Minister of Mines and Industries, who left his carpet business inSaudi Arabia to join the Taliban and run Afghanistan's industries. 'Beforewe took control of the south there was no factory working in the country.Now we have reopened mines and carpet factories with the help of Pakistaniand Afghan traders,' he added. He agreed that few members of thepowerful Kandahar Shura were interested in economic issues as they weretoo involved with the war. 16As an investment incentive to foreigners, particularly Pakistani traders,Ahmed Jan was offering free land to anyone who would build a newfactory. But with the collapse of the country's infrastructure, any investorwould have to build his own roads and provide electricity and housing.Only a few Pakistani and Afghan transport-traders based in Peshawar andQuetta, who are already involved in either smuggling or the lucrativeillegal timber trade from Afghanistan, appear to be taking an interest inprojects such as mining.There is no educated or professional class left in the country. In theseveral waves of refugees that have left the cities since 1992, all the educated,trained professionals, even telephone operators, electricians andmechanics, have gone. Most of the Taliban running the departments offinance, economy and the social sector are mullah traders - businessmen,truck transporters and smugglers for whom the rationale of nationbuildingis seen only in the perspective of expanding the market for smugglingand the trucking business across the region.One such is Mullah Abdul Rashid, a fierce-looking Taliban militarycommander from Helmand, who gained notoriety in April 1997 when hecaptured a Pakistani military patrol that had entered Afghan territoryfrom Baluchistan province to chase a gang of drug smugglers. Rashidarrested the soldiers and sent them to Kandahar, sparking off a row withPakistan. He also runs the Taliban-owned marble mines in Helmand. Themine which employs 500 men with picks, has no mining engineers, no