August 10th, 2009 § 0
In June, I met with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to discuss how the drug trade benefits the Afghan Taliban. I urged him to pay close attention to the two history chapters of my book, Seeds of Terror, warning that Washington has a habit of making the same mistakes over and over in Afghanistan.
He assured me the Obama team had consulted with a raft of experts and historians, adding with a laugh: “We plan to make new mistakes.”
I am not entirely sure, however.
July 28th, 2009 § 0
My husband, John Moore, who is a great photographer, has just put together several multi-media pieces on the war in Afghanistan, one of which features yours truly.
You can watch them here.
July 20th, 2009 § 0
From Time Magazine’s website:
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.
Read the full interview here.
July 14th, 2009 § 3
On July 9, a blogger/intelligence consultant named Joshua Foust wrote a review of Seeds of Terror on the website Registan.
You can read it here.
I’ve emailed him a reply, which I hope he posts, and I am also putting it up here:
Hi Joshua,
I wanted to respond to your blog post on Seeds of Terror both to clarify some issues for accuracy and to further public debate on the important subject of Afghanistan’s drug trade. Having looked around your website, we disagree on some issues and agree on others, including the extent to which ordinary Afghan people are victimized by the opium trade. You have obviously spent time looking at this topic and I thought your concerns deserved a more lengthy response than I would give a casual critic. I hope you will post it. I also plan to link to your review and post my response on my website.
You start off your blog post by saying that it takes me more than 130 pages to discuss corruption, which you regard as the more “pernicious” issue.
I actually agree that it will be a far greater challenge for the NATO alliance and the international community to find reliable partners – both in Afghanistan and Pakistan – and to root out the corrosive issues of corruption and criminality.
However, I did not set out to write an exposé about corruption in AfPak. I believe there has been extensive media coverage of the issue of corruption within the Karzai government and the Afghan police, and that monitoring groups like Transparency International have raised public awareness about the extent of corruption both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I did not intend (nor did I claim) to pen an encyclopedic book detailing every aspect of the AfPak drug problem.
Rather, I sought to research and write about how the drug trade supports the insurgency and extremist groups in the region. That is an issue I felt had not been well documented and about which, as you say, there appears to be much conflicting information.
I believe that insurgencies occur in places that lack good governance. I discuss this in Seeds of Terror, as you note in your review, and I also devote considerable time to the issue of corruption – even in those first 133 pages – especially the long history of connections between the Pakistan military, the ISI and the drug trade.
I am not going to respond to all of your points, but want to address a few broad issues you raised, starting with the issue of correlation vs. causation. You write:
She notes that the Taliban came to power in 2003 “just as opium exploded across southern Afghanistan.” Well, okay. Does that automatically mean opium caused the Taliban? She never really says.
Actually, I think I do. Now, the Taliban did not come into power in 2003, leaving me wondering whether you are referring to the birth of the movement in mid-1994 (and their subsequent takeover of Kabul in 1996) or if you are talking about the 2003 announcement by Mullah Dadullah that they were launching a comeback.
Either way: I discuss at great length the origins of the Taliban, the economic backdrop to their rise to power and their early links to smugglers (both of opium and other commodities) on pages 68-76. In case you missed that point, let me state clearly and for the record that I do believe there is a direct causal relationship between the opium trade (and other smuggling) in Afghanistan and the origins and rise to power of the Taliban.
With regards to the post 2001 Taliban resurgence, there are both correlative and causal factors. There is evidence, for example, that Taliban commanders in Helmand – where few western forces were deployed after the 2001 invasion – tapped into existing opium stockpiles and used money they raised by selling off that opium to regroup and rearm themselves. I’d call that correlative. But there are also “causal” examples, like the story of Taliban forces and trafficking gangs pushing into Farah and Nimroz provinces in 2004/2005 – where poppy cultivation then mushroomed (See page 11 of 2008 UNODC annual opium survey for recent data on the crop size in those provinces).
There is widespread evidence of Taliban commanders collecting tax, extorting businesses and local communities, and also evidence that some of them struggle for money at times (all of this happened during the Soviet resistance as well). There are communities that appear to be victimized more by the local police (take a look at this recent Reuters story, for example), and I have found clear evidence that the Taliban, at least in the south and in some parts of Pakistan, have earned some degree of public respect for implementing impartial justice (this issue is also discussed on page 3 of a recent Atlantic Council report). One thing I have come to learn about Pakistan and Afghanistan, is that nothing is ever black and white.
Another reason this situation is so complex to explain, and sometimes contradictory, is because the wider insurgency is so multi-faceted. It would have been far easier to explain had all the insurgents behaved the same way. But the truth is, and I believe you would agree, that there are various “Taliban” operating along the AfPak border, and they don’t all act alike. In addition to three separately commanded insurgent fronts within Afghanistan (the eastern flank, the southeastern wing and the “original” Taliban in the south), there are also criminal gangs that often get referred to locally as Taliban. Across the Durrand Line, there are various branches of the Pakistani Taliban, along with other Pakistani, regional and international extremist groups.
What is common among these anti-state groups – on both sides of the border – is that they all engage in criminal activity of some sort or another to raise funds. It might be timber smuggling, human trafficking or taking a cut on emerald mines. They also collect “taxes” on legal goods. I compare the way the various groups interact to the way Mafia crime families relate to each other. Sometimes they collaborate, and sometimes they fight each other. They hold regular meetings to decide who has rights to earn in what territory. And when they work together, it is often to earn money.
In this regard, anti-state groups in AfPak are following the pattern of insurgents and terror groups around the world. The phenomenon happening in South Asia is neither new nor unique: It’s happened to the FARC, the IRA and Hezbollah, among others. What is worrisome, among other things, are the growing indications that some fighters in Afghanistan have links to criminal gangs in the West.
I’m not sure where you get the idea that Chechen and Uzbek are fighter are “mythical.” There has been widespread reporting of the IMU and Chechen presence in South Waziristan and the FATA in recent years, where they have battled both the Pakistani army and other militants and tribal elements. The IMU routinely puts out videos, like this one or this one. One of the local journalists who helped me research Seeds of Terror personally met Uzbek fighters who were supporting Mullah Fazlullah in Pakistan’s Swat Valley in 2008. There were reports Tahir Yuldeshev was recently wounded in Waziristan, and even more recently an Afghan reporter emailed me to say there are reports Yuldeshev has since decamped to northern Kunduz.
You accuse me of contradicting myself:
On page 86 we see that U.S. counternarcotics officials say they have no evidence of Osama bin Laden’s direct involvement in the drug trade, but on page 89 we see a former NSC official alleging that bin Laden used Ariana Airlines to launder money and drugs. Make up your mind!
My mind is made up. I believe bin Laden played a key role facilitating the drug trade during the 1990s. But that doesn’t mean I think he routinely got on his sat phone to coordinate jingle trucks full of dope that were traveling down the Chaman highway. Over and over, I heard how senior leaders – be they corrupt state actors, muj commanders or terror chiefs – did not personally muddy their hands in the day-to-day running of drug or other criminal operations. But they made contacts and facilitated relationships that made those deals possible across tribal lines, district and national borders.
Throughout Seeds of Terror, I have labored to present evidence and counter-evidence, and then to analyze that information instead of just cherry picking details that suit my argument. I am the first to agree with you that the conflicting information coming out of different U.S. government agencies has stymied attempts to formulate a coherent counternarcotics policy towards the region.
In my conclusion, I call for greater information sharing and cooperation among the various U.S. agencies that collect intelligence on Afghanistan and Pakistan. I believe the intelligence community, law enforcement agents and the U.S. military would all benefit greatly from a broad, detailed and classified study of how the insurgency finances operations, as well as how terror groups operating along the border fund themselves. Much more analysis of this issue is needed.
As you note, on page 14 I quote U.S. officials as saying that the DEA believes that 70 percent of the Taliban’s financing comes from drugs. You then link to an AFP story quoting the former U.S. commander in Afghanistan Dan McNeill as saying the figure is more like 40 percent. But actually, if you read the next line of that same AFP story, Gen. McNeill goes onto say, “he had been told by an international expert that this figure was likely low and could reach up to 60 percent.”
So where does the truth lie, at 70, 60 or 40? McNeill didn’t seem to know for sure. I’d raise another question: Can anyone really know? Since Seeds of Terror went to press, I have come to conclude that wondering what percent of the Taliban’s funding comes from drugs is a fairly futile exercise, given that Taliban commanders appear to keep few paper records and, as I said before, there is no longer just one Taliban.
Rather than trying to quantify the amount of money the Taliban and other anti-state groups are earning, I believe the focus should be on identifying and disrupting flows of money reaching insurgent, extremist and terror groups (as well as, of course, corrupt state actors). Degrading the enemy’s source of funding, while simultaneously improving governance, are critical pillars to any counterinsurgency campaign, and Afghanistan and Pakistan will be no exception.
Kind regards, Gretchen Peters
July 14th, 2009 § 0
John R. Schmidt, a former foreign services officer who was based in Pakistan and who now teaches at George Washington University, has written an insightful analysis of the political backdrop in Pakistan that has contributed to its current unravelling. Read it here.
I thought his analysis of the land- or manufacturing-based elite that have swapped power with the Pakistan military since the country was founded was right on, as well as his remark, on page 33, that the lawyer’s movement could represent:
“the first stirrings of a civil society that could in time challenge the system.”
Schmidt also carefully dissects the complex and not always friendly relationship between Pakistan’s military and intelligence forces and the various militant Islamic groups they have at times fostered and at times fought.
It’s worth a read.
July 8th, 2009 § 0
A Reuters report, filed from Sorkhdoz, in Helmand says:
The mullah’s message was blunt. We don’t trust you and if you don’t earn our trust, our first meeting will be our last.
With that, he stood abruptly and walked out of his first “shura,” or council meeting, with U.S. Marines.
U.S. forces who have moved deep into formerly Taliban-controlled territory in southern Afghanistan this week say they are here to stay and will not leave until they have improved the lives of ordinary people.
But locals — used to seeing NATO troops come through to fight but fail to follow through on promises of development — may not be won over easily.
This Reuters story (read the full text here) aptly describes what an uphill battle Marines in Helmand have in front of them — not fighting the Taliban, who have melted into the countryside — but winning the trust of ordinary people. This story contains the key to winning the villagers’ trust:
Mullah Zainuddin, the village’s religious leader, listed their demands.
They want the provincial authorities to allocate more water for their irrigation system. They want a health clinic, and they want a school. Produce these things or leave us alone, he said.
“I do not trust you. There have been international forces that have come through the village and promised schools, promised clinics. When you are already (delivering) that, then I will trust you,” he said.
“We are out of patience here. If you do not do these things and solve these problems, we will leave this village. We will fight: every man, woman and child, we do not fear death.”
One thing that always struck me as I researched my book, Seeds of Terror, is that villagers like Mullah Zainuddin, who are clearly wavering between the Taliban and the Kabul government, do not have particularly tall orders. Listen to what this guy says: He wants the irrigation system in his village fixed (probably so the people can grow something other than poppy, which is drought resistant), a health clinic and a school. These are not huge demands folks. Let’s make them happen. And fast!
This excellent Washington Post report described the type of grandiose development schemes I watched fail all over the country — and even describes one of the most absurd I personally came across (and describe in Seeds of Terror) a project to build cobblestone roads in southern Afghanistan (a place that needs everything, except for more bumpy roads).
My experience is that Afghan people aren’t expecting much — just good security, some jobs, a school (both for boys AND girls) and medical care. Wow. Not so different from what we want here in the U.S.
July 4th, 2009 § 0
The Boston Globe reports that Hamid Karzai has irritated American authorities again, this time by pardoning at least 10 convicted drug traffickers, at least some of whom have powerful relatives who are supporting the Afghan president in his campaign to get re-elected when the country goes to the polls on August 20. Read the full story here.
As I have said in numerous presentations I have given on the subject of the drug trade and the insurgency, I believe fighting the Taliban will not be the biggest challenge the U.S., NATO and the international community face when trying to stabilize Afghanistan. In fact, fighting drug corruption within the government and the Afghan National Police will be a much tougher task.
June 29th, 2009 § 1
The U.S. government has announced that it will be reshaping counter narcotics strategy in Afghanistan to increase efforts to interdict smugglers and traffickers and take the focus off crop eradication, which has hurt poor farmers.
This is a welcome change. As the Obama administration’s special envoy to the region Richard Holbrooke put it, the policies of the Bush administration — which pushed grandiose development plans and wide-scale crop eradication — largely failed:
“They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work and they alienated people and drove people into the arms of the Taliban.”
To support this shift in focus, the U.S. military (not to mention troops from other NATO nations operating in Afghanistan) will have to reshape its efforts from the ground up to accommodate this shift in focus. There are two main areas where they will have to change their behavior, one is how they interact with locals, and speak about the Taliban and al Qaeda (in other words, a public relations campaign) and the other is how they collect intelligence. Every U.S. soldier in Afghanistan plays a critical role, right down to the grunt on patrol.
First, public relations. American forces in Afghanistan should stop using words like jihadi, mujahidin and Taliban to refer to the enemy, because these are actually complementary terms for them. I like the suggestion made by counter insurgency expert David Kilcullen in his brilliant book The Accidental Guerilla that they use the term ‘taqfiri,’ or heretic. As I say in my presenations on the book, the Taliban use two bogus arguments among the local populace to rationalize trafficking drugs. One bogus argument is that, even though Islam’s holy book, the Koran, bans the use, cultivation and traffic in all narcotics, it gives you a pass in times of war (it does not). The other bogus argument they use is that the Koran allows you to traffic in drugs as long as you sell them only to non-Muslims (it doesn’t, and they don’t). Almost none of Afghanistan’s drug crop ends up in the United States, while Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran — all Muslim nations — have skyrocketing addiction rates. If coalition forces talk about the Taliban as heretics and criminals, they will have a better chance of winning public support.
Second, collecting intelligence. U.S. soldiers patrolling the mountains, villages and poppy fields of Afghanistan are no different than the cops who walk the beat on U.S. streets. They have a valuable role in collecting ground level information about how the enemy funds himself. If a military patrol intercepts a guy with a drug shipment, find out who he got it from, and more importantly, who he is taking it to. Don’t ask him if he knows where Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar is. Would a New York City beat cop busting a cocaine pusher ask him where to find Pablo Escobar? No, but that low-level smuggler is part of a chain. He will have information about the guy above him on the chain, and that guy will have information about the guy above him. Follow the chain. Follow the money.
June 23rd, 2009 § 3
Watch my appearance on Good Morning America Weekend here about the escape of New York Times reporter David Rohde and his translator Tahir Ludin after seven months in Taliban captivity. Kidnapping has become a growth industry for the Taliban on both sides of the AfPak border, and the case of Rohde, Ludin and driver Asadullah Mangal was typical in that the threesome was kidnapped by a local criminal gang inside Afghanistan and then sold up the insurgent chain of command to end up in a compound in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The camp was run by the Haqqani Group, under the command of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the son of the legendary mujahidin commander Jalaluddin Haqqani (see my dossiers page for more on Dad).
Rohde and his associates were by no means unique victims of the kidnapping problem along the AfPak border. The vast majority of the people abducted come from middle class and wealthy Pakistani and Afghan families. Thousands have fled the border areas, or moved out of the country, because of this growing problem.
When Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in January 2002, his captors intended to make a statement, and they did so by beheading him and releasing a grisly video of his execution. It shocked the world. When David Rohde was kidnapped, his abductors intended to make money — lots of it. In their first request, they asked almost $30 million for his release, according to Western and Afghan officials, along with the release of high value Taliban prisoners being held by the US military.
The Taliban demand smaller ransoms for locals they kidnap, but the issue is the same. Kidnapping is now a central pillar of the Taliban’s criminal economy.
By the way, you can also watch me on PBS’s Newshour here.
June 21st, 2009 § 2
A Taliban fighter recently killed by NATO troops in southern Afghanistan was found to have a tattoo from the Aston Villa Football Club, indicating he may have grown up in Britain’s West Midlands. It was the latest evidence that British Muslims of South Asian origin have joined the fight in Afghanistan. (Read the full report here)
For some time, Royal Air Force spy planes have picked up radio communication between Taliban fighters who speak with thick accents from Manchester, Birmingham, West Bromwich and Bradford, all cities with large populations of British Muslims of South Asian origin.
“But it was a shock to hear that the guys we were fighting against supported the same football clubs as us, and maybe even grew up on the same streets as us,” the Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed British military official as saying.
Some law enforcement officials believe the British Taliban fighters may have links to criminal gangs in the UK whose members are Muslim and who have been connected to selling heroin on British streets. At least one other captured Taliban fighter was found to have British gang tattoos on his arms, according to a western law enforcement advisor to the U.S. military, and there is evidence that various British Muslim gangs have sent fighters to Afghanistan, or sell Afghan heroin on British streets.
The Gambinos, gangsters of Pakistani origin who take their name from the New York crime family, have been linked to selling Afghan heroin in north London and Luton. So have the South Man Syndicate (SMS) and the Muslim Boys (who are also known as the PDC, or Poverty Driven Children).
“The big bosses have Taliban and al Qaeda connections and we’re often told only to deal it to non-Muslims. They call it chemical jihad and hope to ruin lives while getting massive payouts at the same time,” said a street dealer quoted in this British tabloid.
Members of the Muslim Boys, a gang of Afro-Caribbean Muslim converts (many of who converted to Islam in prison) have boasted to the British media of their links to to al Qaeda, although British officials admit it is hard to tell how much is bravado and how much is a sign of a concrete relationship between extremists in South Asia and the Muslim gangs of the UK.
But some British law enforcement officials believe the link is there – and cause for serious worry. Lee Jasper, the chair of the Lambeth police consultative group has expressed concerns that “the leaders of the Muslim Boys could be a criminalized front for terrorist extremists” in Britain.
