Taliban mulls flooding the West with heroin to shore up Afghan economy
The Taliban is ascendant. Ashraf Ghani and his Government have fled Afghanistan.
But as hardline Islamists form a government for the first time in two decades, they also face a looming economic crisis and the risk of a sudden halt to the aid payments which have sustained the country for years.
The opium fields, which have long been a crucial source of cash for the Taliban, could now become a vital replacement for those international funds - sparking a new surge in heroin across the West.
Back in 2001, the invading allies were aware of Afghanistan’s status as a nascent narco-state.
“The biggest drugs hoard in the world is in Afghanistan, controlled by the Taliban. 90pc of the heroin on British streets originates in Afghanistan,” Tony Blair told the Labour Party conference just weeks after the terror attacks of 11 September 2001.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/taliban-mulls-flooding-west-heroin-161242984.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
who will put food on the tables of the Sackler family?
He pressured strongly for the release of a hardened criminal in 2018, who is now going to be the next President of Afghanistan.
He pressed for the release of 5,000 dangerous killers who are now also in Afghanistan....
He invited the Taliban to Camp David for a meeting...............
but will do so here regarding the draw to that country (and it's not the "lithium" or "oil" or other stuff). There is a more lucrative commodity that has been a feature there for centuries -
By Reuters |Aug. 16, 2021, at 1:02 a.m.
U.S. News & World Report
FILE PHOTO: An Afghan man works on a poppy field in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan April 20, 2016.
REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo Reuters
By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States spent more than $8 billion over 15 years on efforts to deprive the Taliban of their profits from Afghanistan's opium and heroin trade, from poppy eradication to airstrikes and raids on suspected labs. That strategy failed. As the United States wraps up its longest war, Afghanistan remains the world's biggest illicit opiate supplier and looks certain to remain so as the Taliban is on the brink of taking power in Kabul, said current and former U.S. and U.N. officials and experts.
Widespread destruction during the war, millions uprooted from their homes, foreign aid cuts, and losses of local spending by departed U.S.-led foreign troops are fueling an economic and humanitarian crisis that is likely to leave many destitute Afghans dependent on the narcotics trade for survival. That dependence threatens to bring more instability as the Taliban, other armed groups, ethnic warlords, and corrupt public officials vie for drug profits and power.
Some U.N. and U.S. officials worry Afghanistan's slide into chaos is creating conditions for even higher illicit opiate production, a potential boon to the Taliban. "The Taliban have counted on the Afghan opium trade as one of their main sources of income," Cesar Gudes, the head of the Kabul office of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), told Reuters. "More production brings drugs with a cheaper and more attractive price, and therefore a wider accessibility."
With the insurgents entering Kabul on Sunday, "these are the best moments in which these illicit groups tend to position themselves" to expand their business, Gudes said. The Taliban banned poppy growing in 2000 as they sought international legitimacy, but faced a popular backlash and later mostly changed their stance, according to experts. Despite the threats posed by Afghanistan's illicit drug business, experts noted, the United States and other nations rarely mention in public the need to address the trade - estimated by the UNODC at more than 80% of global opium and heroin supplies.
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-08-16/profits-and-poppy-afghanistans-illegal-drug-trade-a-boon-for-taliban
I have posted this before and people were looking at me like I was stupid. It's just like Vietnam (heroin as part of the "Golden Triangle" ) or Nicaragua (cocaine). There's always a "reason" and it's not what they profess it to be.
