Today, officials say the militia nets tens of millions by forcing farmers to plant poppies and taxing the harvest, driving the country's skyrocketing opium production to fund the fight against what they consider an even greater evil — U.S. and
NATO troops.
"Drugs are bad. The Quran is very clear about it," said Gafus Scheltem, NATO's political adviser in southern Afghanistan. But to fight the enemy, he said, "all things are allowed. They need money and the only way they can get money is from Arabs that support them in the (Persian) Gulf, or poppies."
This article does a good job at teasing apart the complexities and consequences of NATO's occupation of Afghanistan, while reminding people that we are in Afghanistan, and also looks at the motivation to produce heroin and indirectly at our failed war on drugs.
