Book Trails Trump Tryst to Crush Pakistan Role in Afghan Drugs

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Trump Bid to Crack Afghanistan Drug Cartel was Foiled by Pakistan: Book

By Raisina Correspondent

New Delhi, January 8: With the US President-elect Donald Trump set to assume presidency in the next few days, a new book has traced his failed bid to tame the illicit drug trafficking from Afghanistan when Pakistani Army used tricks to outsmart Washington by conniving with the Taliban.

Iqbal Chand Malhotra in his new book ‘The Nukes, the Jihad, the Hawalas and Crystal Meth’ revealed that the Pakistani Army sought to protect the crystal meth labs where drugs for international trafficking were processed while the US forces on the order of Trump in his first tenure went in search of the laboratories.

Trump in the election campaign this year again has vowed to dismantle the illicit drug trafficking.

In the chapter ‘Operation Tempest and the Treachery around Narcotics’, Malhotra writes: “Directorate S’s strategy was for the Taliban to intensify operations in and around cities. This approach was designed to draw security forces away from rural areas and concentrate them in urban centres. By doing so, the Taliban could capture highways, isolate the cities and generate fear among the populace. The only significant obstacle to the success of this strategy was the USAF.”

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He writes that Trump had ordered the USAF to target the Afghan narcotics industry. “On 6 May 2019, they used smart munitions to bomb sixty-eight meth labs in southwestern Afghanistan. All sixty-eight labs were destroyed in a single day, in the Bakwa district of Farah province,’ wrote Malhotra in the book.

He also stated that “since autumn 2018, the DEA had observed traders from Farah and Helmand at the foothills of the mountains, eager to buy the crop at the ‘mountain gate’. The increasing market demand caused ephedra prices to triple between 2017 and 2018, attracting more villagers during the harvest period”.

Malhotra also stated that “a single villager could harvest up to 70 kg of ephedra a day. With the help of a donkey, they could earn up to $125 per day for their efforts The DEA relied on the David Mansfield report on ephedra cultivation in Afghanistan”.

He also stated that reports indicated that ephedra grew wild in the mountains of Wardak, Ghor, Helmand, Uruzgan and Ghazni provinces. “Estimates suggested that the harvested crop from a representative sample of a valley, including around fifteen villages in Ghazni, could total up to 2,500 metric tonnes in a single season. This amount of ephedra could produce between 8 to 25 metric tonnes of methamphetamine. With 192,000 square kilometres of mountainous land over 2,500 metres in altitude in Afghanistan where ephedra could grow, there was no shortage of raw material. The DEA believed that under these circumstances, it was only a matter of time before Afghanistan’s methamphetamine industry rivalled its heroin trade,” added the author in the book.

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He stated that the USAF raid was another reaction by the White House to address the DEA’s concerns. “Interestingly, the entire ephedra trade continued unabated. There was no effort to interdict the supply lines delivering this raw material to the meth labs. As a result, methamphetamine seizures remained relatively minimal at first,” wrote Malhotra.

From a paltry few kilos seized in 2010—when the first meth produced under Guzman’s direction began to appear—annual meth seizures in Afghanistan reached 180 kg in 2018, he added. “In the first half of 2019, seizures surged to a record 650 kg, according to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The epicentre of the ephedra aka Oman trade was the Abdul Wadood Bazaar in Bakwa, Farah province,” stated Malhotra, who has written four books on strategic affairs on South Asia.

In 2018, one hawar (450 g) of harvested ephedra sold for $284 in Bakwa, he wrote. “This amount could produce 12 kg of ephedrine, according to meth cooks in Bakwa who spoke with the Integrated Drug Production Unit (IDPU) team. That ephedrine could be converted into 8 kg of nearly 95 per cent pure crystal meth using commonly available chemicals like toluene and iodine,” added Malhotra.

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He also stated that “each kilogram of this meth sold for $316, making the total value of the 8 kg approximately $2,500. In 2019, the street price of meth in the US was $40,000 per kg, meaning the entire 8-kg batch was worth $320,000. A quick calculation shows that a metric tonne of meth in the US in 2019 sold for $40 million, compared to $320,000 acquisition cost per metric tonne in the Bakwa market”.

However, he stated, following the USAF strikes, the trade went underground, with locals shifting to trading from inside their homes. “Thus, for the ISI, the Sinaloa, and the CJNG cartels, protecting the ephedra-to-meth trade was essential, necessitating the use of every asset down the value chain, from Khalilzad onwards. Although the USAF airstrikes did not cause significant damage, they nonetheless alarmed Directorate S, which grew concerned about potential next steps from the White House,” wrote Malhotra.

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