Unclouded questions

You naughty boy DMB.

Interesting as well is the amount of money the CIA were making form heroin exports from Afghanistan. This matters not because they're greedy per se, but more because it would allow them to fund further operations.. So much for the War on Drugs.

I say 'were', because I have a hunch the Taliban banned planting poppies and making the stuff.

Bad Taliban! Bad! Bad Dog!

And every dog .. has it's day.

That's what I heard too. The taliban stopped the export.

The same herion exports that are alive and well today.

Then you have books like this http://www.righteouswarriortemple.org/New%20Folder/cr15.htm

I love wiki....here's more 'naughty' facts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin

"The cultivation of opium in Afghanistan reached its peak in 1999, when 225,000 acres—350 square miles—of poppies were sown. The following year the Taliban banned poppy cultivation, a move which cut production by 94 percent. By 2001 only 30 square miles of land were in use for growing opium poppies. A year later, after American and British troops had removed the Taliban and installed the interim government, the land under cultivation leapt back to 285 square miles, with Afghanistan supplanting Burma to become the world's largest opium producer once more. Opium production in that country has increased rapidly since, reaching an all-time high in 2006. War in Afghanistan once again appeared as a facilitator of the trade. Some 3.3 million Afghans are involved in producing opium."

CIA sponsored trafficking was also ongoing during the Vietnam was as well.

Interesting when you think about the politics of a 'war on dugs' when in reality there seem to be wars OVER drugs...

The CIA has obviously employed the strategy of funding a rebel force through the drug trade in order to destabilize and oust another regime. We know Bin Laden and Co. were funded and trained by the CIA in the 80's to drive out the Soviet's from Afghanistan. Looks like in 2000 the relationship went sour when the Taliban stopped heroin production.

Yep, despite the fact that drugs are seized when encountered, they go to the building of the local establishment, who more often than not take the chance to sell them on anyway.

Farmers grow them because you can get more money than from grain (I believe). They certainly don't grow them out of choice.

Yet again, princes go to war and the little people suffer.

On the other hand though, Iran is surrounded and Pakistan has been forced to rally against it's autonomous Western provinces (tribal owned, and very much tribally run - Army & Police 'no-go' zones).

'An enemy of my enemy is my friend'?

America has a lot of diplomatic [military] might in the Middle East, in a time of oil crisis and apparently a pretty fluid situation in Iran (as ever). I wonder how much CIA money is flowing into Iran through the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan?

naughty facts, eh?

I love a nughty fact me


I once read that our economies are addicted to the drug trade, without it our ecomonies crumble and as such our governements have a vested interest in keeping it controlled and kept flowing