Since the Taliban guerrillas to the "warlords" from the Government itself, all benefit in Afghanistan's heroin trade.
Opium, the natural substance from which heroin is obtained, is the national product of Afghanistan, which supplies 90 percent of the drug consumed in the world.
According to the latest report by the Office on Drugs and Crime of the UN, opium production reached 7,700 tons last year to 157,000 hectares of poppy cultivation, the plant that produce this substance. Although these figures represent a reduction compared to 2007, opium is still a thriving business and the main engine of the national economy each year by moving 2630 million euros.

That's the amount that, at the price listed on bordering countries reported opium and heroin from Afghan drug traffickers, while farmers who grow poppy plantations were almost 565 million euros. In addition, taxes on such crops (the traditional "USHR") are between 38 and 54 million euros, which is then inflated to between 154 and 309 million during the production process and transportation.
These rates are charged on both the country that controls the government of President Hamid Karzai as in areas that already have recovered the Taliban insurgency, which has been strong in the middle of southeastern Afghanistan. In addition, 98 percent of opium cultivation is concentrated in such regions, so the drug trade and has become the primary source of funding for Taliban guerrillas.

In this sense, the UN estimates that claims "Students of the Koran" could get up to 78 mln euros thanks to the drug, but this amount will necessarily be much higher due to the rapid advance of the Taliban offensive, which increasingly has more and better.

Not surprisingly, in northern Afghanistan, in the arms bazaars of the border with Tajikistan, with a kilo of heroin can be bought 30 guns "Kalashnikov", six rocket-propelled grenades or half a dozen boxes of ammunition.
But not only the Taliban take advantage of this business to finance rearmament, according to NATO, 40 and 60 percent. Rampant corruption in government supported by the United States has made Afghanistan a "narco-state" with branches at the highest political level.

In fact, recent journalistic investigations have pointed to President Karzai's brother as one of the biggest drug dealers in the country. Despite the suspicions, all these accusations have been rejected and labeled as "political vendetta" by Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is governor of Kandahar, a southern provinces where the Taliban have their stronghold. True or not, heroin is the business that remains in power to the "warlords" who run the country from their respective regions. And to have started to move and some theories involving the CIA and U.S. military in drug trafficking, as in the Golden Triangle during the Vietnam War in the 70's.
Since the fall of the Taliban regime in December 2001, opium production has increased by 33, since Islamic fundamentalists took the traditional poppy cultivation to their lowest levels.

Although the UN tries to encourage the exchange of such plantations for other agricultural products, the impoverished Afghan farmers cling to the only crop that can report some gains due to the huge demand for the drug clans. Also they feel safe for the multinational forces in Afghanistan, as countries like Spain, Germany, Italy and Poland are reluctant to have its soldiers involved in operations from military to police against drug trafficking. All this despite the fact that heroin is fueling the Taliban offensive and bringing back the ever-turbulent war Afghanistan.

Afghan Opium creates a narco-state that moves EUR 2630 million YR

Paul M. Díez, special envoy in Kabul for ABC