by Dave Gibson

Created on: November 20, 2008   Last Updated: November 30, 2008

In 2000, the Taliban banned opium production in Afghanistan, as it became illegal to grow poppies. Any farmer caught cultivating the cash crop would be severely punished;probably by death. By the middle of 2001, there was basically no opium produced in Afghanistan, though that nation usually led the world in production of the drug. However, since the U.S. led invasion, the poppy fields are growing again and the opium trade is flourishing as never before. Apparently, Bush's idea of a 'War on Terror' is making the world safe for the narcotics trade.

The Taliban had relied on opium sales to finance their operations until July 2000. It was then that the regime's leader Mullah Mohammed Omar issued a ban on the drug trade, because he claimed that it conflicted with Islamic law. However, it is more likely that the move was made to boost the slumping prices of opium across Europe, after Afghanistan had produced an all-time high of 4,600 tons in 1999. Less than a year later, a U.N. delegation visited the areas of the country where poppies were traditionally grown and found nothing. The head of the U.N. Drug Control Program said: "There are no poppies. It's amazing."

By January 2002, the U.S. military had the Taliban on the run and the poppy fields had returned in earnest. At the same time, the U.S. and NATO nations signed a worldwide ban on opium production. The U.N. released a report on the return of the Afghan opium trade which noted: "Afghanistan has been the main source of illicit opium: 70 percent of global illicit opium production in 2000 and up to 90 percent of heroin in European drug markets originated from Afghanistan."

The report went on to say: "There are reliable indications that opium cultivation has resumed since October 2001 in some areas (such as the southern provinces Uruzgan, Helmand, Nangarhar, and Kandahar), following the effective implementation of the Taliban ban on cultivation in 2001, not only because of the breakdown in law and order, but also because the farmers are desperate to find a means of survival following the prolonged drought."

Despite the Bush administration's claims at the time that the international drug trade helped finance terrorism, a blind-eye was turned to the activities of the Afghan warlords and the Pashtun mafia. The U.S. and our NATO partners ignored the re-introduction of the poppy crops and allowed opium production to flourish.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime recently released a report which found that during 2006, opium

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