BY MICHAEL ARNOLD
International intelligence agencies are keeping their eyes on a new fifth column that has emerged to undermine the war on terrorism.
No longer simply content to drop out of the system, heroin users, utilising the proceeds of the stolen video recorders of average citizens, are consciously channelling funds to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "Chasin'", the catch-cry of Australia's street-based heroin dealers, has been altered to the new euphemism "Want 'ghanistan?", as they attempt to take advantage of the new market demand.
This is the new stereotype of drug users emerging from the war on terrorism, and while it has featured most prominently in the corporate media in the US, their Australian counterparts are beginning to pick up the baton.
Dennis Hastert, speaker of the US House of Representatives, in announcing a new anti-drugs taskforce, stated "By going after the illegal drug trade, we reduce the ability of these terrorist networks to launch attacks against the United States".
Another important element of this campaign has been the message that heroin distribution represents "chemical terrorism".
Senator John Kerry, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argues that, in addition to the financial benefits, a byproduct of Osama bin Laden's trafficking is revenge on the world. Their objective is to "get as many people drugged out and screwed up" as possible.
The figure that Afghanistan produces 75% of the world's opium has been often quoted in these reports, and campaign supporters have said that the decimation of Taliban opium fields and distribution networks will be a welcome consequence of the bombing.
According to figures produced by the UN Drug Control Program, in the year 2000 harvest Afghanistan produced an estimated 4000 tonnes of raw opium, with around 95% of that being produced in Taliban-controlled areas.
The Taliban supported the widespread expansion of opium production when they came to power in 1996, and taxed the sale at 30%, providing one of the most significant revenue sources for their government. In July 2000, however, the Taliban instituted a ban on the production (although not on the possession or sale) of opium.
This ban led to what many have argued is the most successful anti-drugs campaign ever conducted. UN figures estimate that the opium coming out of Taliban districts in the 2001 harvest dropped to only 50 tonnes. This is despite the fact that Afghanistan was in the midst of serious drought, and poppies are a drought-viable crop.
While the "anti-drugs" Plan Colombia is costing US$5 billion, Afghanistan received almost no assistance to provide financial incentives for farmers to switch crops.
In contrast to the massive decrease in harvest, and perhaps as a result of the significant increases in the price of raw opium created by the absence of product from the Taliban, production in Northern Alliance-controlled zones increased by around 25% to 250 tonnes.
Yet Asa Hutchinson, the US Drug Enforcement Administration's administrator, argues "Despite the Taliban's public relations commitment ... there has not been any reduction of heroin trafficking or in the amount of heroin coming out of Afghanistan".
The DEA claims that massive stockpiles of opium remain in Afghanistan. Some commentators have suggested that this will be released en masse onto the market (creating a massive windfall given the increase in per kilogram opium price), and a few have even gone so far as to claim that this will be poisoned and delivered as a chemical weapon.
There can be little doubt that reactionary thugs and right-wing militias control large portions of the global drug production market. From Central Asia, to the Golden Triangle, and on into Central and South America, the links between these groups and drug trafficking and production has been well established.
This is an almost direct result of global prohibition — these are the main groups (although not the only ones) that have the connections and the funds to move large amounts of substance around the world.
However, the fact that the military allies are willing to overlook opium production in Northern Alliance zones, while utilising the drug war as one of their key propaganda tools, suggests that shutting down drug supply is not their key motivation.
Australia is a significant producer of opium for legal purposes — opium that is refined and altered into drugs like morphine and the many codeine compounds that are used to treat everything from headaches to dry coughs.
Anyone who has done first year university chemistry or read a few drug user magazines would be aware of the incredibly close chemical relationship between legal opiates and their illegal cousin, heroin. Undermining the criminal networks through the creation of medical heroin from legally produced Australian opium would be an incredibly simple goal.
Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, one of only a few groups of reformers in the US which has not been outflanked by the propaganda campaign, argues that the drug war blinded authorities to terrorist threats.
He cites reports in Boston news media that FBI agents in the 1990s actually apprehended Raed Hijazi, an admitted al-Qaeda member. Hijazi, according to the reports, provided the agents with information on the Boston-area terrorist cell later involved with the September 11 hijackings. But the FBI was reportedly interested only in information Hijazi had on heroin trafficking.
The war is being utilised to subvert democratic rights in the developed world — as the targeting of drugs and drug users makes clear.
Since September 11, US DEA agents have commenced a crackdown on medical marijuana clubs, conducting the first raid in three years on these services in California. The target was a club providing marijuana to over 900 people living with serious illnesses, such as cancer and AIDS.
Closer to home, 200 Sydney police officers have used sniffer dogs to raid four nightclubs, an action targeted at the very lowest rungs of the drug market, and so similar to the disastrous Victorian Police's Tasty nightclub raid that it could arguably not have gone ahead without the vilification of users and the link with terrorism that was perpetuated by the corporate media in the early weeks of October.
These incidents highlight that those of us who use drugs, like other groups of people forced outside the law by social policy, are often the first in line when the state chooses to crack down.
As for Australian users helping to fund the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Afghanistan has never been considered a source country for heroin reaching Australia, and is only estimated to supply around 10% of the US market. The majority of Afghan heroin travels overland and is used in Russia and Eastern Europe, right across Europe to the UK.
More importantly, drug users can be held no more responsible than any consumer for the actions taken by the companies that supply needed products.
I have a loan with GE Finance that paid for my fridge. While I find it disgusting that my interest payments go to a company that supplies military hardware to the US, life would have been very difficult without a fridge.
Whether used as an analgesic (physical pain-reliever), an emotional sedative to assist in dealing with trauma or just as a way of injecting fun into your life when the world is sucking it all out, users' lives are very difficult without heroin.
We are denied the "right" of most consumers to at least find out about the companies they are dealing with, and to choose others if possible. We can really have almost no idea about the conditions of production or the journey the drugs have gone through before reaching the street.
Legalising and placing drugs under community control offers a strategy for removing criminal and paramilitary elements from the global drug market. It offers users the chance to access safe, medical-grade gear.
During 2000 the bacteria cryptosporidium penetrated a batch (or, possibly, several batches) of heroin that entered Britain. Twenty-eight users died, and demands from the users and harm reduction movements that heroin be made available until the end of the crisis were ignored by the Blair government.
The response to this very real and devastating crisis highlights their hypocrisy in warning of an imagined al-Qaeda "poisoning" of heroin.
The bombing campaign greatly increases the likelihood that Afghan farmers will plant opium this season. Requiring very little water, and readily transferred into cash, it will be a very attractive crop.
Any humane resolution of the war should include a deal with collectives of small-scale Afghan farmers to purchase this heroin at prices which provide them with a real living wage. It should then be transformed into heroin for legal distribution.
Only through this sort of system can we start to eliminate the basis for the few drug traffickers who are making fortunes off the backs of users and opium farmers.
From Green Left Weekly, November 21, 2001.
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