As the mujahedeen resistance gained strength and began to create
liberated zones inside Afghanistan in the early 1980s, it helped fund
its operations by collecting taxes from
peasants producing lucrative opium poppies, particularly in the fertile
Helmand Valley, once the breadbasket of southern Afghanistan. Caravans
carrying CIA arms into that region for the resistance often returned to
Pakistan loaded down with opium — sometimes, the New York Times
reported, “with the assent of Pakistani or American intelligence
officers who supported the resistance.”
