Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...from the world drug market, but Costa believes the missing opium is a potential time bomb, and many law-enforcement officials agree. That's because the Taliban is believed to be "stockpiling to control the prices," says a spokesman for Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency, who confirmed that NATO forces have uncovered Taliban stockpiles of opium. Despite the bumper opium harvests, the street price of heroin remains a costly $67 per g in European cities, and the price Afghan farmers charge for their opium has remained about $70 per kg (about $33 per lb.). If the entire crop...
...Taliban could also be stockpiling drugs in preparation for a possible onslaught on Afghanistan's drug lords. NATO defense ministers agreed at a summit in Budapest this month to use their soldiers in Afghanistan for the first time to attack opium laboratories and smuggling convoys, rather than simply destroy opium crops...
...international drug- and law-enforcement officials are right, the Taliban might be hiding up to $3.2 billion worth of opium inside Afghanistan, potentially causing huge complications for NATO's decision this month to attack Afghanistan's opium laboratories and smuggling networks. If it exists, the drug stockpile would also have a major bearing on Afghan officials' tentative peace talks with the Taliban, which are favored by U.S. Central Command chief General David Petraeus and both U.S. presidential candidates...
...When British forces recently occupied Musikalia in Helmand province, they uncovered a stockpile of 45 tons of opium. But that's a tiny fraction of what has disappeared. "Where is it? We have been asking," says Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. drug office. He recently appealed to NATO forces and Western intelligence officers to launch an aggressive hunt for the opium...
...France has made battling the Somali pirates a major priority of its forces in the region. (France maintains a permanent military base in nearby Djibouti.) The French and NATO vessels will patrol the waters off Somalia under a U.N. mandate to escort commercial ships and those carrying humanitarian supplies to drought-stricken areas, and to scour the area for pirates before they strike. Last April, French forces had stormed the luxury cruiser Le Ponant to rescue 30 vacationers and crew members taken hostage by Somali pirates. Six of those pirates, plus six others captured after another French hostage intervention...