WNU Editor: Two different articles that describe the extent that monies from Afghanistan's opium trade is being funneled to the Taliban. I am not sure if they will be successful in stopping this trade .... but NATO is starting to at least address this problem.

DECEPTIVE The beauty of the Afghan opium poppies belies the conflict they feed. Col. Paul Calbos survived a suicide attack days after this visit, part of a drive to curb the trade. John Moore/Getty Images.
(Photo from The New York Times)

Gates Calls For Anti-Drug Campaign In Afghanistan
-- Washington Post

BUDAPEST, Hungary. Oct. 9 -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates called on NATO allies Thursday to target drug lords running Afghanistan's flourishing heroin trade as part of a wider effort to confront a resurgent Taliban.

"Part of the problem that we face is that the Taliban makes somewhere between 60 and 80 or more million dollars a year from the drug trafficking," said Gates, who is attending a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers. "The drug trafficking is not only corrosive of good governance because it contributes to corruption. It also directly funds the people who are killing Afghans, Americans and all of our coalition partners there."

Gates, however, ruled out any large-scale crop eradication campaign, which would likely alienate the country's farmers, many of whom survive on income from growing opium poppies.

Read more ....

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NATO Chief Urges War on Drugs to Break Taliban's Financing -- Bloomberg

Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer urged the military alliance to intensify the fight against drugs in Afghanistan to cut funding of Taliban insurgents.

The Taliban gets as much as 60 percent of its income from the drug trade, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization estimates. The Taliban uses the profits to purchase weapons for the seven-year-long conflict as its insurgents step up their offensive in Afghanistan that seeks to topple the government of President Hamid Karzai.

``We may agree now on the fight against narcotics or it may come later,'' Scheffer said as quoted in an interview in Hungarian newspaper Nepszabadsag. ``My personal opinion is that drug production is indirectly putting in danger the lives of our soldiers'' and that is why NATO ``must take part in cracking down on this along with Afghan authorities.''

He said an expanded NATO role would include destroying drug production laboratories. NATO defense ministers are holding two days of informal talks in Budapest starting today.

Germany and France are leading the opposition to a stepped- up NATO effort in dismantling the Afghan drug trade, saying the job should be spearheaded by the Afghan military and police in order to keep the alliance from getting bogged down in the country's internal divisions.

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