Fighting the New Narcoterrorism Syndicates

In her new book, Seeds of Terror, journalist Gretchen Peters makes the compelling argument that the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan have evolved (or devolved) from purely religious terrorist groups into narcoterrorism syndicates with religious overtones. The drug trade nets them $500 million a year in profits, resources the militants use in their fight against Western forces. Until that supply of cash is cut off, Peters argues, Western forces cannot defeat the militants.

But this transformation also provides Western military commanders with opportunities they can exploit. Local populations that tolerated or supported the Taliban and al-Qaeda for ideological reasons are less likely to back criminal gangs. If Western commanders and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan can help protect and organize local communities, they stand a better chance of winning the war.

The author recently discussed these issues with TIME’s national-security and terrorism correspondent, Bobby Ghosh. Excerpts:

You report that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are now raising $500 million a year from the opium trade. What does that mean in terms of their capabilities and what they are able to do with that sort of money?
It’s clear that drug money is paying for the Taliban’s operational costs within Afghanistan. That means that every time a U.S. soldier is killed in an IED attack or a shootout with militants, drug money helped pay for that bomb or paid the militants who placed it. Opium funding helps pay for salaries, weapons, explosives and food. The Taliban is a self-sustaining organization financially. We see an example of this in their recent attacks on the Pakistani government, like the bombing of the Inter-Services Intelligence offices in Lahore recently. The Taliban have now thrown off their old masters and are a full-fledged criminal force on both sides of the border.

(Read TIME’s interview with General Stanley McChrystal.)

They are beginning to sound like an organized criminal enterprise that happens to have some echoes of a revolution — like FARC in Colombia or Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers.
Right. We often compare the war in Afghanistan to the war in Iraq, and in my opinion, it much more closely parallels the war in Colombia and the transformation of the FARC from a Maoist group into a criminal smuggling organization that came to control a Switzerland-size chunk of Colombia. [Many] of the Taliban commanders have lost their ideological roots and are really just in it to make a buck.

I’m not trying to suggest that they have put aside their intention to drive Western forces out of Afghanistan, and I do not believe that al-Qaeda has put aside its intention to launch further attacks on the West. Far from it. Increasing casualty rates in the region, both among locals and among NATO troops, proves that they are actually more violent and more dangerous. But one opportunity that comes out of this is that they are also far more hated by the local population. If you read the reports coming out of Swat, out of Southern Afghanistan, out of Kandahar, Helmand, the tribal areas in Pakistan, increasingly the people of the border areas refer to them as criminals and gangsters. They really are more similar to Tony Soprano than the Che Guevara image we have. They are hardly behaving like pious Muslims.

See pictures of the wars in Iraq and Afghanstan at LIFE.com.

Watch a video on the challenge for the U.S. military in Afghanistan.

So if they are behaving like the FARC, what lessons are there from Colombia that can be applied in Afghanistan?
A lot of people say to me that the last thing we want to do is get involved in another messy drug war, and I always say, “Too late.” The biggest challenge is corruption, because as much money as the insurgents are earning off the drug trade, corrupt officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan are earning even more. It’s going to be very complex for the U.S. and for the international community, for NATO, to find reliable and trustworthy partners to work with. I don’t think that it is widely understood how high up the corruption goes within the Pakistani government, particularly within their military and intelligence forces.

For several years now, the U.S. and NATO have been trying to dissuade poppy growers in Afghanistan — either by force or by encouraging them to switch to other crops. It doesn’t seem to be working. Why not?
Well, one reasons why farmers grow poppy is that it typically earns more than other licit crops. Anyone who has driven down Afghanistan’s spine-crushing highways knows the challenges of growing fruits, gapes, oranges … they would be completely bruised and destroyed by the time you get them to market, if you even can.

There are also areas where the Taliban is threatening farmers with dire consequences if they don’t grow poppy. The opium traffickers send in merchants in the fall to prepurchase the crops, so it gives the farmers a much needed cash injection that they use to get their families through the winter. We’ve done nothing in the international community to provide that kind of microcredit program for licit crops. To my mind, the important thing is to really take the focus off of the farmers and to put it on the traffickers.

NATO and U.S. forces have a new commander, General Stanley McChrystal. What are the first three or four things he needs to do to address this problem?
I think the first step has to be identifying how the money and drugs flow, studying the maps and looking at the routes that narcotics take out of the country, identifying where the drug labs are, identifying the major players. This is going to require a lot more intelligence-sharing than has been going on.

General McChrystal’s other big priority is going to be helping establish security in border areas to create the correct environment for a bottom-up stability campaign at the village level. U.S. and NATO military officials, working alongside civilian officials, can work with communities to push these people out. There is no point in trying to reconcile with the Taliban — and when I say the Taliban, I mean the leadership of the Taliban. We’re never going to beat the Taliban and al-Qaeda by trying to shoot them all. However, I do believe that there are many tribes living on the southern Afghanistan border that can be pulled away from the insurgency if offered a better alternative.

I think that we will win this war in Afghanistan and Pakistan when we make the Taliban and al-Qaeda irrelevant and offer the people of the border areas a better alternative. People want security, schools, health care. They really just want a safe place to live. To my mind, this is like an inner-city slum where there are criminal gangs terrorizing the people and cops that are on the take. We need to clean up these communities. We need to help the people of this region, and I think we’ll see this situation start to turn around.

(Read “A New General, and a New War, in Afghanistan.”)

See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.