The Taliban, Poppy Cultivation, and Opium Markets

https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/06/talibans-successful-opium-ban-bad-afghans-and-world

https://www.rferl.org/a/afghan-farmers-livelihood-taliban-bans-opium/31803532.html

The United States Institute for Peace or USIP is a mouthpiece for the US government. The fact that this federal agency is required to have both the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense on its board reveals it to be a sham. It does not promote or stand for peace. It cannot with these kinds of imperialist and militarist connections.

All that said, this 2023 article concerning Afghanistan was unique and truly comical. I was not surprised to find that Radio Free Europe (long an arm of the CIA) is also on board with this story and was promoting it back in 2022. Readers will recall the US pulled out of Afghanistan in August 2021.

I'm not making this up. The bottom line is the Taliban is bad because it's stopping opium production - which it's admitted they did this before when they last held power. This is why many of us laughed at Tony Blair's ridiculous declaration that 'we will bomb their poppy fields' in the aftermath of 11 September 2001.

A great deal more comes to mind concerning the role of US intelligence in the drug trade, a story that ranges from the Golden Triangle, to Latin America - to Afghanistan in the 1980's. This dark tale is a lucrative one which involved the Karzai government - which long ruled as the US proxy. It was marked by corruption - the very corruption that fueled Taliban support among the populace.

It is incredible to me that this agency (and Radio Free Europe) would have the gall to run a story like this. Are they so desperate to condemn the Taliban this is what they've chosen to come up with? And again, considering the US record with regard to the drug trade one must ask - are these people just ignorant or banking on the fact that their audience is?

More could also be said about the highly profitable nature of the drug trade, how farmers are often trapped by the economics and pressure from organized crime - or how Taliban control is not uniform nor is the organisation monolithic. They're still there and they wore down and defeated the United States but in reality it's not the same Taliban that was in power in the late 1990's.

When the US has waged war on the cartels in Latin America, have they worried that in doing so, the economic aftershock would lead to a refugee crisis? It has in fact done so, but that's not been the concern, the drug war outweighs it. And as those who have looked into these issues will know the war on drugs has completely lost its way and taken on a life and existence all its own. The 'war' is an economy to itself and self-sustaining. If they actually 'won' and eradicated the trade, the ramifications of that would be dire for the American economy.

That's the truth behind the US government condemnation of the Taliban's suppression of poppy farming and its effects on the opium trade. They're not worried about Afghan farmers but the US economy. It's a truth that cannot be spoken aloud in polite society or even whispered beyond the confines of a back room.