The role of the Taliban in the opium trade is often greatly exaggerated by the U.S. corporate media. But even if one was to accept accounts like those the New York Times gives of the Taliban's role, it nevertheless still remains self-evident that the Taliban's cut is "trivial" if one considers the bigger picture.
That is not to say the profits gained by the Taliban and other insurgent groups are not significant. As Mr. Costa notes in the UNODC report, given an estimate of nearly $500 million going to insurgents, it is not surprising that "the insurgents' war machine has proven so resilient".
While acknowledging that "the Taliban will only receive a rather small fraction of the overall Afghan income from the opiate trade", Mr. Pietschmann also emphasized, "But even the 'little money' of let's say US$150-200 million is a lot for financing insurgency activities. Our information is that Taliban fighters earn several times more than people in the Afghan army."
The question still remains of who is really responsible for the lion's share of the highly profitable Afghan opium trade. Mr. Pietschmann suggested a role of Kurdish groups in trafficking the drug from Iran into Turkey.
In Turkey, some have suggested the existence of a shadow government, or what is termed the "deep state", that really controls things behind the scenes. Even a former president and seven-time prime minister of Turkey, Suleyman Demirel, has said, "It is fundamental principle that there is one state. In our country there are two." He added, "There is one deep state and one other state. The state that should be real is the spare one, the one that should be spare is the real one."
Writing in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, John Gorvett, a free-lanced journalist based in Istanbul, said: "Defining the 'deep state' is not so easy, however. Some argue that it is a hangover from the Cold War, when Western powers sought to establish a network of armed groups that would stay behind in countries that might have fallen to the Soviet bloc. While these groups were then abolished in most countries when the Soviet Union collapsed, the theory is that in Turkey this never happened. Instead, the group continues to operate, an unofficial underground army tied to organized crime and a bevy of corrupt politicians, police and bureaucrats."
In one case, a heroin trafficker on Interpol's wanted list named Abdullah Catli died in a car accident in 1996 near the town of Susurluk and was found carrying a diplomatic passport signed by the Interior Minister of Turkey. Writing in Druglink Magazine in 2006, journalist and television producer Adrian Gatton commented, "The Susurluk Incident became Turkey's Watergate, exposing the deep links between the Turkish state, terrorists and drug traffickers. It revealed what Turks call the Gizli Devlet, or Deep State – the politicians, military officers and intelligence officials who worked with drug bosses to move drugs from Afghanistan into Europe."
That corruption extends to the United States, according to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. According to Ms. Edmonds, U.S. officials were involved in helping foreign intelligence agents acquire sensitive nuclear secrets. She also says she was approached by a mole within the FBI who attempted to recruit her. The woman who approached her was a member of the American Turkish Council, which was the target of an FBI investigation because it was suspected of being involved in, among other things, drug trafficking. When she went to her superiors with concerns over possible misconduct and espionage within the FBI, she was fired. The Department of Justice then gagged her under the "state secrets privilege".
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