Title: Drug trafficking organizations - Wikipedia
Headings: Drug trafficking organizations
Drug trafficking organizations
Contents
History
Organization and structure
Structure
Mexican DTOs
Colombian and Dominican DTOs
Asian DTOs
Impact of DTOs
Finance, violence and terrorism
Gang involvement
Combating drug trafficking organizations
Enforcement
Public health
References

Content: The use of automatic weapons, threats, and bribery are common in maintaining control. " Narcoterrorism " is not a new threat but has become a domestic fear for the US after the attacks on September 11. With the formation of terrorism task forces and intelligence community initiatives, a greater understanding of the relationship between drug trade and terrorism has taken place. Many terrorist organizations have the drug trade as their major income - for instance the Taliban controlled 96% of Afghanistan's poppy fields and made opium its largest source of taxation which became one of the mainstays of Taliban income and their war economy. According to Rashid, "drug money funded the weapons, ammunition and fuel for the war." In the New York Times, the Finance Minister of the United Front, Wahidullah Sabawoon, declared the Taliban had no annual budget but that they "appeared to spend US$300 million a year, nearly all of it on war." He added that the Taliban had come to increasingly rely on three sources of money: " poppy, the Pakistanis and bin Laden." According to Alfred McCoy, during the Cold War the CIA provided Afghan drug lord allies such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar with transport, arms, and political protection in the fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. According to Loretta Napoleoni terrorism later shifted from being mainly state sponsored to gaining financial independence from their sponsors and becoming self-financed.