Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
by Ahmed Rashid
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ahmed RashidEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-04-07
ISBN: 014311557X
Number of pages: 560
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
Book Review: Indepth information about the Afghan heroin trade.
Summary: 5 Stars
Ahmed Rashids book "Descent into Chaos" is an incredible book that gives indepth information about the current situation on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I can warmly reccomend it to you if you want learn more about Americas war in Afghanistan.
The book has a good and well informed chapter on the heroin trade in Afghanistan. He gives a detailed account of its origins and dynamics. Here is a short summary: Afghanistan is one of the largest drug producing nations on earth. This is partly due to the fact that the Taliban need to fund their uprising against NATO and the United States. The return of the Taliban and the new AlQaeda training camps would not have existed without the new booming heroin trade. The attempts of the Afghan government to build up its society has been made very difficult because of the money generated from the drug trade. Its very difficult to find an alternative source of income to the opium growing farmers.
In 2005 there were an estimated 2 million farmers growing opium in Afghanistan. The opium trade had originated in 1986 in Pakistan when Afghan commanders brought opium seeds into southern Afghanistan and planted it there. From there the raw opium was shipped back into Pakistan and sold by the resistance fighting against the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. This was done to fund the war effort. All this was done according to Rashid while both the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence agency called the ISI (short for Inter-Services Intelligence) looked the other way. Several high post officials within the ISI where fired due to their complicity in the drug trade.
Rashid means that the CIA played the same dubious role that they did in the Vietnam war. Outwardly they denounced the heroin trade while letting it continue in their effort to stop the global spread of communism. The CIA refused to deal with the connections between the heroin syndicates, high post Pakistani officials, and the resistance fighters. This caused major frustration with the DEA( the American drug enforcement agency). After the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan America pumped in around 100 million dollars into Pakistan to make it drug free, and this worked, for a while.
During the civil war in Afghanistan that started after the Russians left, the Taliban warlords used drug money to pay their soldiers and buy food from Pakistan. The Taliban also started taxing the opium growing peasents and they exported the heroin through Al Qaedas connections to criminal syndicates in the Persian gulf. The Taliban ceased their opium deals in 2000 when they had been promised legitimacy by world governments if the stopped the drug trade. After their regime was ousted by the US attack on Afghanistan in 2001 this would change.
When the US invaded in Afghanistan after 9/11 in 2001 they worked with certain Afghani war lords who where known drug runners. The war on terror and the war on drugs did not go hand in hand. The British tried to stop the opium production since 98% of the heroin in Britain comes from Afghanistan. They payed over 80 million dollars to Afghan officials to pay to farmers to stop growing opium. This only resulted in more corruption. This resulted in corrupt police and judges which made it very difficult to arrest the smugglers.
The corruption was so widespread that it reached up into the top layers of the Afghan government. The job as a police chief in a top opium producing province was auctioned out at a price of 100000 dollars for a six month work period (this job usually had a wage of 60 dollars!). The Afghan president Hamid Karzai was reluctant to deal forcefully with the situation. Often drug barons got high posts in the Afghan government.
In 2005 the pentagon and the CIA went on the record to say that drug money funded terrorism. It helped the Taliban pay their soldiers, it also helped them buy newer and more advanced weapons, and it helped Al Qaeda build their training camps. Now there where 170000 heroin addicts in Afghanistan that consumed 90 tons of opium in 2005. The drug money effectively crippled every attempt to establish a legal economy because none of the other industries could compete with the winnings from the drug industry.
Most of the countries surrounding Afghanistan have also been pulled into the drug trade. The central asian republics north of Afghanistan have all become transit routes for the heroin that is headed for Russia and Europe. The drug money has helped the ruling elites of these countries get very rich while hiv/aids has spread rapidly amongst the drug using populations. Overall the heroin use has increased by ten times in central asia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Almost 3% of the population above the age of 15 are dependant on heroin in Iran. Almost half of those 170000 people in Iranian prisons are there on drug charges. In 1979 Pakistan was heroin free, and in the year 2000 there where an estimated 5 million addicts. Pakistan is where much of the raw opium from Afghanistan is processed and refined in laboratories before it is smuggled to other parts of the world. After 9/11 opium was once again grown in Pakistan.
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Summary of Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
After September 11th , Ahmed Rashid's crucial book Taliban introduced American readers to that now notorious regime. In this new work, he returns to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia to review the catastrophic aftermath of America's failed war on terror. Called "Pakistan's best and bravest reporter" by Christopher Hitchens, Rashid has shown himself to be a voice of reason amid the chaos of present-day Central Asia. Descent Into Chaos is his blistering critique of American policy-a dire warning and an impassioned call to correct these disasterous strategies before these failing states threaten global stability and bring devastation to our world.
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