It has now been over a year since President Joe Biden ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Defending the president from a posh resort in Colorado as the anniversary neared, his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, simply declared, “It had to come to an end.”
For many Afghans, of course, it never ended.
Biden abandoned tens of thousands of Afghan special immigrant visa applicants who had risked their lives for the United States; the Taliban now systematically hunt them and their families down for slaughter. The Taliban are not only extremist Sunni Muslims but, in practice, they are also Pashto supremacists. Afghanistan’s many minorities again suffer arbitrary violence, theft, rape, and murder. Women are completely dispossessed, the entreaties of U.S. diplomats from hotel conference centers in Uzbekistan notwithstanding. Realists may dismiss the importance of human rights and argue that women, minorities, and even the fate of Afghan allies are not core American interests, but they are not the only concern. The Taliban’s embrace of al Qaeda shows both the emptiness of Taliban commitments and the reemergence of the threat that led the U.S. into Afghanistan in the first place.
And terrorism is not the only threat the Taliban pose.
Afghanistan has long been a hub for opium cultivation. During the first period of Taliban rule prior to 9/11, the group claimed it took a no-nonsense approach to opium cultivation. At first glance, it might look like the Taliban were serious. In 2000, opium cultivation in Afghanistan plummeted to near zero. While the Taliban accepted international praise, the reality was more sinister: During the Taliban’s first years, supply increased above demand. When the Taliban cracked down on cultivation, they maintained the warehoused opium and slowly sold it on the market to keep prices elevated. Simply put, the Taliban’s anti-opium posture was for external consumption only, much like the opium itself.
Now, a new threat is emerging from the Taliban’s Afghanistan. Earlier this week, an astute Iranian customs official at the tiny Mahiroud border post between Afghanistan and Iran noticed something suspicious about a white truck coming across the border. A drug-sniffing dog confirmed his suspicions. Concealed in a compartment welded shut under the floor was 500 kilograms of crystal meth, a $50 million haul.
The Taliban might plead ignorance about opium, never mind they used the proceeds of its sale or taxation to fund their insurgency, but they cannot dismiss crystal meth manufacture as being deeply rooted in Afghan culture. Rather, the Taliban seem intent on turning their emirate into a narco-state. Given the Taliban’s embrace of terrorist groups, it appears that they are using their foray into drug smuggling as a mechanism to fund global terrorism.
Sullivan and his Biden administration colleagues may believe the war had to end, but enemies get a vote. Afghanistan today represents not the cessation of “endless war” but the calm before a far greater storm.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
