How Opium Profits the Taliban (And What To Do About It)

Afghanistan produces over 90 percent of the world’s illicit opium crop. In the country’s poppy-rich south, a raging insurgency intersects a thriving opium trade. Gretchen Peter’s study “How Opium Profits the Taliban” examines how the Taliban profit from narcotics, probes how traffickers influence the strategic goals of the insurgency, and considers the extent to which narcotics are changing the nature of the insurgency itself. Our discussion will explore the connections between opium, insurgency, instability, and corruption, and examine policy recommendations that include the need for the U.S. to take the lead in revitalizing the international community’s strategy toward Afghanistan and drugs, and to expand the view that the drug problem is much bigger than just and Afghan problem.

Speakers

• Gretchen Peters
  USIP Grantee, Journalist, and author of “How Opium Profits the Taliban” (USIP, 2009), and “Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda” (Thomas Dunne, 2009)
• Michael Braun
  Former Assistant Administrator and Chief of Operations, US Drug Enforcement Agency
• William Byrd
  Economic Adviser, Fragile and Conflict Affected Countries Group, The World Bank
• J Alexander Thier, Moderator
  Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan, USIP