The Taliban and Drugs
By Douglas Farah
Well, for those who have argued there is no smoking gun linking the Taliban to opium production, the jig is now up. NATO forces discovered 11 tons of processed opium in a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan, meaning the opium was at the stage where it can be converted to heroin on about a one-to-one ratio. In other words, it was almost 11 tons of heroin.
The Taliban had an ambivalent relationship with the poppy trade during its reign of terror in Afghanistan, and now appears to have done away with any pretense of not engaging in the lucrative trade.
This explains in large part, as I have written about over the past year, why the Taliban and the Arab/foreign fighters allied with them, have greatly increased their firepower and tactical and communications capabilities.
This is only the latest sign of the merging pipelines and blurring of the distinctions with terrorists and transnational criminal organizations. The great equalizer in this is the drug trade, which offers relatively easy access to huge amounts of money. Few seem able to resist it, from the thugs running Burma to the Central American gangs and criminal groups that control the Central America-Mexico pipeline. My full blog is here.