Mint/Wall Street Journal: Afghanistan’s Opium Business Cranks Up as the Taliban Look the Other Way
Drug markets open and farmers plant more poppies with drought and sanctions crippling the economy
Afghanistan’s opium industry—the main source of heroin sold in the West—is revving back up. Here in Talukan, dozens of merchants openly trade different grades of opium in a busy new market that has sprung up since the Taliban’s Aug. 15 victory.
Plastic bags filled with viscous brown liquid are on display next to metal bowls filled with a jellylike substance as well as solid dark bricks of the narcotic.
White banners praising the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate fly from every shop. In this and other districts of southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, the Taliban movement’s cradle, farmers say they are starting to plant poppies on land where they used to grow wheat or corn because a combination of drought, international sanctions and border closures has made legal crops unprofitable.
“Everyone is poor here, and will become even poorer if we don’t grow poppies. There is no alternative:
Our other produce simply has no market," said Salih Mohammad, a 55-year-old father of seven. He said he increased the land under poppy cultivation from 2.5 to 4 acres, or half of his leasehold, this month:
“There is no doubt that people here will grow more poppies this year than in the past."
In late August, shortly after overthrowing the U.S.-backed Afghan republic, the Taliban promised that they would eradicate the country’s multibillion-dollar drug industry, which accounts for 85% of world-wide opium production.
Three months later, as the poppy planting season begins, the opposite is happening.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: Another Taliban broken promise.
Bottom line.
The Taliban need the money, and the control that goes with it.
More News On The Taliban Permitting The Afghan Opium Business To Thrive
In Hard Times, Afghan Farmers Are Turning to Opium for Security -- New York Times Post/New York Times
Afghan poppy season returns in force under Taliban rule -- Nikkei Asia
The Narco-Terrorist Taliban -- Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate
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