Seeds of terror: Lateral thinking

Peters reveals a growing nexus between the Taliban, international drug traffickers and terrorist networks...

At first sight, this looks like another addition to the ever-increasing number of books on Afghanistan written by yet another journalist trying to catch a late ride on the terror bandwagon. But scratch the surface of Seeds of terror and it emerges that Gretchen Peters has really done her homework. Drawing on ten years of experience in reporting on Pakistan and Afghanistan and armed with an extensive list of contacts, Peters has effectively outlined one of the most under-reported facets of the Afghan war.

In Seeds of Terror, Peters makes the case that a growing nexus between the Taliban, international drug traffickers and terrorist networks has created an inexhaustible source of funds for both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Until this nexus is broken, Peter argues, there is no possibility of nation-building in Afghanistan and certainly no possibility of a face-saving American exit.

Disarmingly, the book begins with an admission of error. As a junior reporter in AFP during the late nineties, Gretchen admits that the only stories that she filed were the ones guaranteed to see print: stories of the Taliban’s excesses, of the repression of women and of the suffering of the Afghan people. Stories about Osama Bin Laden or the growing terror networks in Afghanistan simply weren’t ‘sellable’ enough. Gretchen says that even US embassy officials in Islamabad complained that their concerns about a nascent Al-Qaeda fell on deaf ears.

It took the fall of the Twin Towers to make the world start listening, but just as human interest stories trumped terror before 9/11…today it is the importance of the drug trade in sustaining the Afghan war that receives scant media attention.

Gretchen argues that this inattention could prove dangerous, saying that while the September 11 attack only cost Al-Qaeda $500,000, terrorist groups can now earn that much money from the drug trade in a single week.

The book is also an eye-opener for a Pakistani audience, and while some of the information is certainly old news for Afghan-watchers, Seeds of Terror is so well-researched and in-depth that even veteran Afghan hands will find new and useful information in it.

A case point is with the ban imposed on opium cultivation by the Taliban in 2000. While this was, and still is, hailed by many as a sign of the Taliban’s opposition to the drug trade, Peters instead claims it was the ultimate ‘insider trading con’. The Taliban not only gained recognition for fighting the opium trade, top leaders simultaneously made huge profits selling off their considerable opium stocks at the now-inflated prices.

An interesting point that I must mention is that the copy I purchased (which was printed in India) had the title Seeds of Terror: The Taliban, The ISI and the Opium Wars’. On reading the book, I found little mention of the ISI, especially in the context of being directly involved in the heroin trade and assumed the author added the ‘ISI’ tag to make the book a little more saleable. But digging a little deeper revealed that the original title of the book (as per the official website) was ‘Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is bankrolling the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.’ A little injection of bias by our friends east of the Wagah border?

Published in The Express Tribune Sunday Magazine, January 9^th, 2011.