U.S.-built bridge is windfall � for illegal Afghan drug trade

"It's an issue of money," Mohammed said, to the nods and grins of the small group of truckers gathered around him near the bridge at Nizhny Panj. "If you give them money, you can do whatever you want."

Well I can backup that one myself some way personally anyway as I was working some years ago in Afghanistan for a (very short) time.
There was (or at least there was from my own experience...) a lot of smuggling operations that went on through one of the border posts in Tajik - I've attached one of my own pics at the time showing the post itself, it's the small white looking group of buildings in the middle right of the picture. I was a fair bit away from it at that stage though.

Whether or not now that whole thing is a conspiracy is another matter. Smuggling happens all over the world and the people in that particular area of Afghanistan (North Eastern) have (in my own opinion anyway) little or nothing better to grow for themselves to make money from other than opium poppies and/or smuggling - there is so much more profit from a field of poppies than there is from any other crop and the Afghan government do not control these regions (not that they'd care much about it anyway).

I honestly, in my own opinion and from personal experiences in the region and with US forces there past and present, would not and do not believe the US have any hand of profit or otherwise in any of these smuggling operations.
The country is huge and the borders are by and large invisible.
If anything, I'd say the drug trade is mostly operated and profited by the Taliban and Al Queda because if the Northern Alliance are profiting from it, they are hiding their wealth very well and those border regions and surrounding area's with Tajik are mostly controlled by the NA.
I've attached another pic looking down upon the small village run by the leader of the NA in one of the most heavily fought area's near Tajik where the Taliban were run out of it by the US forces - as you can see, it is by any means, impoverished to say the least.