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8 comments on The Bullroarer - Friday 2nd May 2008
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8 comments on The Bullroarer - Friday 2nd May 2008
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I thought the Taliban stopped the drug trade (back about 8 years ago or so) - the tinfoil community believes this is one of the reasons the US / UK are staying in Afghanistan forever - to stop them doing it again ! There are some pretty funny stories in the press about this if you keep an eye out for them and are sufficiently cynical (or just read something like Cryptogon and let him do it for you).
I talked about the King Island graphite vs vanadium issue in my post on graphite storage - it wasn't clear exactly what the issue was but some visiting SA parliamentarian noted they were unhappy with the batteries - if you ask them and get a response let me know what the story is.
You know, you could argue that if we (Oz) really wanted to help the Afghanis, we would show them how to make morphine out of them thar poppies. If we really really believed in the free market.
Oh wait, we grown them too...
The Taliban supported the drug trade while fighting the civil war, to get funds to fight, they stopped it while in power (and got a few hundred million from the UN and US to do so), but nowadays since they're rebels again they're buddies with the growers again.
See for example this report about the Taliban protecting growers, or this one noting that Afghanistan now supplies 90% of the world's opium.
Basically it was all predictable. Any insurgency needs money, and so will commit crimes of smuggling of all kinds (drug, arms, any taxed goods like cigarettes) or at least co-operate with and provide protection to criminal groups.
Sure - I don't doubt that Afghanistan is once again the source of most of the world's opium.
And no doubt the insurgents are involved in trafficking it (or extracting protection money from those who do so).
But I gather the warlords who are running the provinces are also heavily involved - and I think they have had their fingers in this pie for a long time.