H. Thomas Hayden was formerly the President and CEO of First Communications Company (FCC), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a joint venture between Raytheon and a Saudi Company involved in Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) Systems for the Ministry of Defense and Aviation, Saudi Arabian National Guard and Ministry of Interior. Before retiring from the US Marine Corps, assignments included Commanding Officer (CO), Headquarters and Service Bn, 1st Force Service Support Group, which deployed to the Gulf War, CO Brigade Service Support Group – 9, which deployed to Somalia and CO MAU Service Support Group – 33, which deployed to The Philippines and Korea. He was Branch Head, Headquarters Marine Corps, Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC), and Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for SO/LIC with assignments to Central America. He has participated in combat operations or contingency operations in the Republic of Vietnam, Central America, Gulf War, Somalia, and Colombia. Tom has a MBA, MA in International Relations, and a PhD candidate in Business Management. He is the author of two books and is currently writing a third: SHADOW WAR: Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict; WARFIGHTING: Maneuver Warfare in the US Marine Corps. He has published over 40 articles and has been awarded the Navy League’s Alfred Thayer Mahan award for literary achievement.
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The initial operational and tactical victories in Afghanistan are now in the process of being lost at the strategic level, as the land disintegrates into narco-terrorism and anarchy.
General Barry McCaffrey, US Army (Ret), has an outstanding article in the January 2004, issue of Armed Forces Journal, where he reports that US efforts will fail unless the link between the drug lords and resurgent Al Qaeda and Taliban forces, are overcome.
McCaffrey reports that opium farmers and traffickers in Afghanistan generated $2.3 billion in profits during 2003. He stated that the harvest of opium in 2002 was 20 times larger than during the last year of Taliban rule. The level of opium planting and the subsequent production of opium paste, morphine, and heroin, in Afghanistan, more than satisfies the demand in Western European and US markets.
President George Bush recently won a hard fought victory when Congress appropriated $1.2 billion for economic reconstruction in Afghanistan. However, there is no coordinated, large scale counter-narcotics law enforcement efforts in Afghanistan, and no alternatives for the farmers to make a living.
The same pattern can be seen in Afghanistan as in Columbia. The communist rebels in Latin America protect the poppy growers for a piece of the action. In Afghanistan the warlords protect the poppy growers for their piece of the action.
There can be neither security nor stable government where there is a growing narco-economy.
Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of the book Financing Evil: How Terrorism is Financed, reported that the globalization of narco-terrorism, and particularly the Islamic narco-terror network, has been common knowledge to international law enforcement and Intelligences services for some time now. Not only is it a tool to raise funds, but Jihad by drugs also appears to be one of the terrorist’ favored methods because it helps undermine targeted countries politically, economically and socially, by creating public health and criminal crises.
Another center for drug trafficking for Al-Qaeda is the South American Tri-border region - Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay - a “no-man’s land,” and the heart of Islamist narco-terrorist activity in Latin America. With its unguarded borders, numerous waterways, and more than 100 hidden airstrips, and with only infrequent passport checks, the region has become a haven for arms dealers, drug traffickers, smugglers, counterfeiters, and narco-terrorists.
Dr. Ehrenfeld also stated that Brazilian law enforcement reported Al-Qaeda’s activities in the Tri-Border region include: cocaine and heroin trafficking, arms and uranium smuggling, counterfeiting CDs and DVDs, and money laundering operations, frequently in cooperation with Chinese Triads (criminal groups) and the Russian Mafia. Moreover, Al-Qaeda’s relationship with Colombian, Peruvian, and Bolivian drug-traffickers often includes arms-for-drugs deals with Latin American terrorist organizations, such as the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the ELN (National Liberation Army), and others.
It is speculated that Al-Qaeda’s involvement in Latin America’s illegal drug trade was preceded by Afghan and Pakistani heroin traffickers, who had worked with the Colombian Cali cartel. The Colombians’ methods of poppy cultivation resembled those in Afghanistan. According to Colombia’s former police chief, General Rosso Jose Cerrano, Pakistani and Afghan heroin traffickers easily entered Colombia with false identification papers.
According to UPI, Madam Michele Alliot-Marie, French Defense Minister, stated that Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network was funded primarily by drugs and was benefiting from Afghanistan’s record opium crop which supplies Europe’s heroin supply. Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D. C., she said the situation requires a “more muscular approach to eradication and to the surveillance of banking networks.”
A famous fiction writer, in his latest book, used the connection of the Columbian drug lords to provide Al-Qaeda-like terrorist teams a means to be smuggled into the US in exchange for arms and money so that they could attack American targets. The Columbian drug lords certainly know how to smuggle items into the US.
Not an implausible scenario.
In my humble opinion, there is one simple way for the U.S. to solve part of the problem - buy the poppy.
With all the money the U.S. is spending on Afghanistan, surely there is enough money to buy the entire poppy crop, and then burn it in front of everyone. There had better be plenty of security because this would totally disrupt the drug lords and their supply chain.
Next, have a plan for the out-years.
One plan would be to begin to build an economy that would switch poppy growers to an alternative crop. This would require markets, roads to get the product to market, banks or financial institutions to loan farmer money to grow new crops, etc.
The problems with narco-terrorism in Afghanistan and Latin America will continue to fester without leadership and adequate resources to combat them. To have any chance of success, the U.S. must support aggressive law enforcement and drug eradication, both at home and in Afghanistan, AND an alternate crop for the poppy growers to make a decent living. The Administration needs to move faster to develop a viable long-term strategy of political, economic and social reconstruction in Afghanistan.
