Taliban Exporting Terrorism AND Heroin. Hardliners Fear Drug is Hurting their Positive Image.

[evildevil]

The Taliban's Life of LuxuryIs Afghanistan destined to be run by a drug mafia

Comments

[zinnia_rose]

...what positive image?

I don't find this particularly surprising. Where there are drugs, there's money.

[alexvdl]

Part of the issue with the "war" In Afghanistan is that it's very hard to distinguish between crime and insurgency. Both groups are heavily invested in Poppy, and in most cases other than get the ANSF to burn poppy fields when they find them, US can't do much about it. With the insurgency so closely related to the crime in the country, and both groups using subsistence farmers to grow their crops either for money or through coercion, you're running into issues where a) US military personnel are being used to do law enforcement, which they aren't trained for and shouldn't be doing even if they were and b) burning some subsistence farmers crops means that he can't feed his family, and that the narcoterrorists (whichever side they fall on) are now pissed off at those farmers.

[romp]

After years of concern about the treatment of women and children by the Taliban and then terrorism, it's interesting that it's not human rights boycotts or military action that might bring it down but greed.