Word: heroines
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That decision has come back to haunt the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. Western intelligence agencies believe Khan has become the kingpin of a heroin-trafficking enterprise that is a principal source of funding for the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. A Western law-enforcement official in Kabul who is tracking Khan says agents in Pakistan and Afghanistan, after a tip-off in May, turned up evidence that Khan is employing a fleet of cargo ships to move Afghan heroin out of the Pakistani port of Karachi. The official says at least three vessels on return trips from...
...only way to cut off al-Qaeda's pipeline is to attack it at the source: by destroying the poppy farms themselves. This year, Afghanistan's opium harvest is expected to exceed 3,600 tons?making it the biggest crop since 1999 and enough to produce street heroin worth $36 billion...
...finally starting to pay attention. Its ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, has tapped top Drug Enforcement Administration official Harold D. ("Doug") Wankel to lead an intensified drive to nail kingpins, shut down heroin-production labs, eradicate poppy fields and persuade farmers to plant food crops. If the drug cartels aren't stopped, the U.S. fears, they could sow more chaos in Afghanistan, which al-Qaeda and the Taliban could exploit to wrest back power. "We need to make a difference in the next couple of years," says Wankel. Miwa Kato, a Kabul-based officer for the U.N.'s Office...
...alternative is being a "mule," smuggling heroin into the U.S. That involves swallowing packets of the drug (62 of them in her case) in Colombia and excreting them once she has cleared customs in El Norte. It's ugly work (you may want to avert your eyes while she is endlessly swallowing the drugs)--and dangerous too. If a packet breaks, the heroin will kill the carrier. But, of course, the money is great--thousands of dollars for a week's unpleasantness, enough to lift Maria's fractious family out of poverty and pay for the birth of the baby...
Marston doesn't make that easy for her in this unpretentious and straightforward film. She's almost caught by customs officers in New York City. Her friend Lucy (Guilied Lopez) sickens and dies when heroin poisons her. Another friend, Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega), turns out to be at once rebellious and dependent when she and Maria are stranded, broke and friendless, on the New York streets. Yet somehow Maria prevails...