Post; War on Terror Hurting War on Drugs

Padre · December 19th, 2007

I'm still in favour of NATO and Australia - and our SASR - killing every Taliban that crawls out of a cave, however I found this article interesting.

According to The Washington Times National Weekly Edition (Sept. 10), Afghan heroin traffickers are "expanding their illicit trade into the United States and Canada to become what authorities [the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police] say is the fastest-growing source of heroin in both countries.... About 92 percent of the world's heroin comes from opium poppies grown in Afghanistan, according to the 2007 World Drug Report.... Opium cultivation accounts for nearly 60 percent of Afghanistan's gross national product. Poppy production has expanded wildly since [U.S.-backed] Hamid Karzai's government took control in 2002."

According to Matthew Quirk in The Atlantic Monthly (March 2005), "When the Taliban banned poppy cultivation in 2000, opium production declined by 94 percent. But after the Taliban fell.... cultivation has exploded...."

Writing in The American Conservative (Sept. 25, 2006), Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, reports that "Hamid Karzai has admitted that many government ministers get payoffs from drug traffickers."

The Taliban also bankrolls its insurgency via the opium trade. But no doubt if the Taliban recaptures the Afghan government, it will banish the opium trade once again.

Stewart Nusbaumer, who served in the U.S. Marines in Vietnam, wrote an article from Afghanistan (The American Conservative, July 3, 2006), in which he quotes a local Afghani as saying, "Without foreign troops, Karzai wouldn't last a day -- maybe an hour."

In 2002 Osama bin Laden was hiding out in Afghanistan (he is said to be in northern Pakistan). Once we toppled the Taliban as part of our fruitless search for Osama, the result was that Afghanistan became our country's "fastest-growing source of heroin." What a mess! The war on terror has proven to be a massive detriment to the war on drugs.

http://www.newoxfordreview.org/note....tes-narcostate

December 19th, 2007
Padre Milforum Chaplain Gear	Post; War on Terror Hurting War on Drugs I'm still in favour of NATO and Australia - and our SASR - killing every Taliban that crawls out of a cave, however I found this article interesting. According to The Washington Times National Weekly Edition (Sept. 10), Afghan heroin traffickers are "expanding their illicit trade into the United States and Canada to become what authorities [the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police] say is the fastest-growing source of heroin in both countries.... About 92 percent of the world's heroin comes from opium poppies grown in Afghanistan, according to the 2007 World Drug Report.... Opium cultivation accounts for nearly 60 percent of Afghanistan's gross national product. Poppy production has expanded wildly since [U.S.-backed] Hamid Karzai's government took control in 2002." According to Matthew Quirk in The Atlantic Monthly (March 2005), "When the Taliban banned poppy cultivation in 2000, opium production declined by 94 percent. But after the Taliban fell.... cultivation has exploded...." Writing in The American Conservative (Sept. 25, 2006), Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, reports that "Hamid Karzai has admitted that many government ministers get payoffs from drug traffickers." The Taliban also bankrolls its insurgency via the opium trade. But no doubt if the Taliban recaptures the Afghan government, it will banish the opium trade once again. Stewart Nusbaumer, who served in the U.S. Marines in Vietnam, wrote an article from Afghanistan (The American Conservative, July 3, 2006), in which he quotes a local Afghani as saying, "Without foreign troops, Karzai wouldn't last a day -- maybe an hour." In 2002 Osama bin Laden was hiding out in Afghanistan (he is said to be in northern Pakistan). Once we toppled the Taliban as part of our fruitless search for Osama, the result was that Afghanistan became our country's "fastest-growing source of heroin." What a mess! The war on terror has proven to be a massive detriment to the war on drugs. http://www.newoxfordreview.org/note....tes-narcostate