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It's the Opium, Stupid
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ShareFebruary 02, 2007 2:25 PM
Lashing out at critics who say his government is soft on the Taliban, President Pervez Musharraf said Friday that Afghanistan's ballooning opium economy, not Pakistan, is to blame for rising security problems on both sides of the border.
"We are all together in this war," the Pakistani president told journalists. "We must stop the blame game and gain trust."
As insurgent violence escalates across the border, Islamabad has come under mounting pressure to crack down on Taliban activity in its lawless border region.
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The Pakistani president said the Taliban leadership was "financed by the drug trade" and called on the international community to step up counternarcotics efforts to stem the tide. "We need to strategize to sever their financial lifeline, which comes from drug money."
Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world's heroin, a booming trade of more than $3 billion a year. Counternarcotics agents estimate that the Taliban now gets most or all of their operational funding from drugs.
February 2, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (7)
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Legalize it. Don't criticise it. We should solve the purported opium issue the same way we solved the problem in Turkey and India many moons ago. By ENCOURAGING them to grow it and then buy it for our own use. Not many Americans know it but we solved our problems in those countries by becoming their best customers. Why not do the same thing in this situation?
The war on drugs is lost and the prohibitionists among us who repeatedly try to link drugs with terrorism are narrow-minded fools.
I am waiting for a U.S. politician with the guts to call for full-scale decriminalization of all drugs across the board. As we learned with the failure of our prohibition of alcohol, decriminalization and regulation is the ONLY answer. Hopefully it will happen before I'm dead.
Hope springs eternal.
Posted by: jim jones | Feb 2, 2007 4:50:26 PM
Only governments can create black markets--hold the governments responsible for the results.
Posted by: Greg Sudderth | Feb 2, 2007 7:27:15 PM
DON'T WE STILL HAVE SOME GOOD OLD AGENT ORANGE AROUND WE NEED TO DUMP? SAY ON POPPY FIELDS AND COCA PLANTS.
Posted by: SEAMUS | Feb 4, 2007 8:11:04 AM
I'd go further than even Greg Sudderth or Jim Jones go, and say that many of the sort of anti-drug propaganda came in the face of ending prohibition, because all of the sudden there would be Federal thugs who would be out of work. In fact, the first anti-drug law (after prohibition, of course) was not really a law criminalizing consumption or possession of anything, but an exorbitant tax on marijauana (called "marihuana" at the time). Congress didn't actually believe it had the authority to pass a criminalizing drug law; they did at least have respect for the Constitution with respect to alcohol. If we're worried about terrorists getting money from opium, we should legalize it and compete. Their money source will take a serious hit. And that means we don't even have to make war...
Posted by: Andrew Elgert | Feb 4, 2007 10:57:19 AM
There is no war on drugs. It's all run by the CIA. Check the facts.
Posted by: John | Feb 4, 2007 1:44:57 PM
Frankly speaking I think we SHOULD take sides in this 'civil war'. The Sunnis deserve to be slaughtered. They have oppressed the Shia for hundreds of years...now, they are getting the big payback, and I can't say I'm crying one little tear for them.
I say arm the Kurds and the Shia and let them annihilate the good-for-nothing Sunnis. Our greatest enemy is Al Qaeda, a wahabbi Sunni organization.
If we take the side of the Shia we will earn their loyalty and we will be able to quickly end this war in Iraq. Plus, it eliminates all of the leverage Iran has with the Shia, denying them access to the government.
Posted by: fly sny | Feb 5, 2007 12:42:45 PM
Gen 1:29
Nuff' said.
"Live it or leave it alone!"
Posted by: Zach | Feb 7, 2007 6:54:30 PM
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