The 9/11 cost al Qaeda only $500,000. Terrorist groups can now earn that from the dope trade every week,? a startling revelation from Gretchen Peters who has covered AfPak for 10 years. A story she believed was waiting to be told. ?Taliban were financing their comeback by deepening their involvement in the drugs trade. But because of the Iraq war, my bosses at the ABC were not interested in it. I kept reporting up to 2006 to get a story on air and by that point I had gathered so much information that I realised I knew just too much to put it into a television story and decided to write Seeds Of Terror.? She narrates to Sarika Malhotra how doing research became increasingly dangerous, ?The area from where you can operate in AfPak is shrinking by the week.? But is it too late for a rescue? Peters is pessimistic, ?It will be very difficult to turn around and will cost much more both in blood and treasure.? Excerpts:

Are we moving from narco trade to narco terrorism?

Narco terrorism oversimplifies the idea. There are some believers but Taliban and other extremist groups are really driven by profit. So the nature of insurgency is changing ? from one that is driven by ideology to one driven by profit. There is nothing particularly new or Islamic about it. Global drugs trade is larger than the global trade in vehicles and textiles put together.

You have advocated for a new economy for Afghanistan. Is it viable?

Before 1979, Afghanistan was a food exporting nation that earned over $100 mn annually from exports, though it was always known for its hashish but not for opium. Pakistan produced more opium than Afghanistan then. It?s not impossible to imagine that it can once again be famous for its melons, promenades and cumins.

What are the misperceptions surrounding narco trade?

Some large landowners make a lot of money but the vast majority of farmers involved in poppy trade are not making money. It?s a very complex structure, the farm loans, the farm support system, the farm subsidies that the drug traffickers give to farmers to grow poppy traps them in a cycle of poppy debts. There is a misperception in the West, especially in the US, that Afghan farmers are in it because of the money. The people who are really profiting are the traffickers. They are making money at the shipping level and at the drug labs. Some farmers are motivated by profit but a majority are forced to grow poppy. They are in remote areas where the security is poor and they can?t find buyers for anything else. The micro credit programmes in Afghanistan have slipped. The solution is to provide security in these areas and to get the merchants and NGOs back.

Elections haven?t helped either…

They are a disaster. Observers indicate that there was an industrial scale vote rigging. They say they haven?t seen an election as farce as this one.

Given that Karzai?s brother is allegedly involved in drug trade, does the future look bleak?

Yes, there are indications to that affect. And President Karzai has dared the international community to prove it, saying the claims are politically motivated. I have seen evidence including intelligence reports that indicate his brother?s involvement in the trade.

But unfortunately his running mate Fahim and the former defence minister are also accused of smuggling; President Karzai has pardoned five individuals who have been convicted of drug trading because they were related to people who were part of his campaign. So, if the international community doesn?t accept this election, there is bound to be violence. If they accept the elections, it will be virtually impossible to fight corruption. It will be complex enough to try and fight an insurgency that is fuelled by crime and drugs. But it will be especially hard if you have allied with a government that is also fuelled by crime and drugs. So essentially we have allied with one set of criminals and are fighting against another set of criminals and it is going to be very difficult for any leader of the 47 NATO countries to send their people to fight in this country in those circumstances. These elections have left the international community in a tight spot.

Why was the US oblivious of the situation?

The US is the world?s biggest consumer of illegal narcotics, but our drugs come from Latin America, not Afghanistan. The US? counter narcotics policy is trying to stop narcotics coming into country, so it does not see it as their problem. Also, America?s allies in the region, particularly the ones CIA has been involved with since the 1980s are neck-deep in the drugs trade. Going after the Taliban connection of drugs trade will open a huge Pandora?s box. The CIA agents work very closely with Karazi?s brother. It leads to the perception among many Afghans and Pakistanis that the US government is not only overlooking the drugs trade but is actually involved in the drugs trade. Lastly, I find it crazy when Americans say that ?we don?t want to get involved in another messy drug war?. You can pretend that it is not happening, but eventually this dragon is going to slay you. Ironically, two opposite sides that are supposedly fighting each other are collaborating for profit sake.

What is the US doing?

It?s going to be a lot harder to combat this problem now that they have become so much more powerful and wealthy. The NATO nations, particularly the US have put itself in a tight spot ? Washington has allied with characters involved in the trade. The Obama administration has been trying to overhaul its strategy but there is still a very big question as to what they plan to do about corruption in Afghani and Pakistani government. The US needs to get its own house in order with regard to its allies. If you speak to the Afghans and the Pakistanis about corruption ? they would start talking about these no bid contracts that the US aid gives ? say, $ 10 mn to build a school in Kanadhar, then the American company subcontracts it to a Turkish company for 7 mn and then they subcontract it to a Afghan company for 3 mn and then finally a one mn dollar school gets built. The US has to stop this obscene corruption within the aid community. I hear that there is not much to choose from in this part of the world, but I don?t believe that?s true. A lot of moderates and a lot of people in AfPak are advocating for better governance.