“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Verbal Kint, in The Usual Suspects paraphrasing Baudelaire.
In Afghanistan, heroin has become the Devil’s cocktail. “Smack” is already one of the most addictive and destructive drugs on Earth, and now show addiction levels on the rise . In a place where 90% of the world’s heroin supply originates, the Taliban, al-Qaeda and others harvest profits from opium poppy cultivation to buy weapons and equipment used to attack soldiers and civilians engaged in a mostly stalled reconstruction mission.
A reverse symbiosis is at work: those who benefit most from the opium/heroin trades also benefit most from a destabilized Afghanistan, because a stable country with functioning government systems, reliable security forces and a framework of laws is a bad climate for the drug trade. Conversely, farmers growing crops such as cotton and beans benefit from a stable government climate, which affords the opportunity to think beyond the next crop cycle. In order to make agriculture a more successful business venture, farmers need a stable government as a partner. But since the interests of poppy farmers and narco-kings are in aggressive opposition to any plan to stabilize Afghanistan, this partnership is not even in the talking stages.
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Contributed by Bill Faith on September 28, 2006 at 12:20 AM in , , |