U.N. Reports That Taliban Is Stockpiling Opium

[babylonsister]

U.N. Reports That Taliban Is Stockpiling Opium

By KIRK KRAEUTLER
Published: November 27, 2008


UNITED NATIONS — Afghanistan has produced so much opium in recent years that the Taliban are cutting poppy cultivation and stockpiling raw opium in an effort to support prices and preserve a major source of financing for the insurgency, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations drug office, says.

Mr. Costa made his remarks to reporters last week as his office prepared to release its latest survey of Afghanistan’s opium crop. Issued Thursday, it showed that poppy cultivation had retreated in much of the country and was now overwhelmingly concentrated in the 7 of 34 provinces where the insurgency remains strong, most of those in the south.

The result was a 19 percent reduction in the amount of land devoted to opium in Afghanistan, the United Nations found, even though the total tonnage of opium produced dropped by just 6 percent.

The high output per acre was attributed to a good growing season in the south, a heavily irrigated area where the Taliban maintain a strong presence in five provinces and have for several years “systematically encouraged” opium cultivation as a way to finance their insurgency, the study said.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/world/middleeast/28opium.html

[shraby]

1. I thought when the Taliban was in charge of

Afghanistan they forbade anyone to grow it..now they're stockpiling it?? Something doesn't smell right about this story.

[Deja Q]

2. Quite. It's supposed to be smoked; not just smelled.

:yoiks:

[louis-t]

3. They did. That was then, before Georgie invaded.

Now they need money. So, like fundies everywhere, that supercedes religious principal.

[bushmeister0]

5. UN report from 2001 on Talib's ban on opium

"The motives for the Taliban ban have been challenged, as possibly a move to raise prices by restricting production. It does seem likely that the Taliban had large stocks of processed opium on hand, perhaps even a year's worth, as was widely reported by the London Guardian and others.

Nevertheless, we can conclude that:

1) In 2000 the Taliban decreed an almost totally effective ban on opium cultivation, a fact reported at the time of the November-December 2000 planting season;

2) The Northern Alliance responded by radically increasing opium cultivation, amounting to 90 percent of Afghanistan's 2001 opium crop; (Our allies!)

3) However the 2001 crop of an estimated 185 metric tonnes (MT) of raw opium represented a reduction in opium production of 94% from the 2000 total of 3,276 MT, and a reduction of 96% from the record high of 4,581 MT reported by the 1999 survey. Furthermore the net reduction of approximately 3,100 MT in Afghan opium production has apparently not been offset by increases in other areas or countries.

4) Thus the world heroin traffic was on the point of experiencing a major reduction after 2001. It now appears that this may not happen, if as alleged there is a rapid expansion of opium cultivation in provinces seized by the Northern Alliance with US support."

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/qf7.html

So, I guess, when our good buddy Ahmad Shah Masood was growing the stuff it was alright, but if the Talibs do it, it's a bad thing.

Smells just about right, to me.

[aikoaiko]

4. Who isn't?

:shrug: