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...Although the Taliban shrugged off responsibility for last week's bombing, coalition forces squarely lay the blame on them. Wary the high civilian deaths might stoke public outrage, the Taliban is trying to wriggle out of blame, says James Appathurai, NATO's spokesman in Brussels. "I have seen that the Taliban deny responsibility. They do not get to wash their hands of this," he said this week. The Taliban have gained control of vast swathes of Afghanistan's south and east over the past few years, prompting the U.S. to send an additional 21,000 troops to the country this...
That more efficient cultivation has hardly been addressed by the NATO campaign to eradicate opium, according to the report. U.N. officials call the military campaign "a failure," because the strategy has focused on destroying poppy fields, without offering farmers an equivalent income if they opt to grow other crops. Fewer than 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares) have been eradicated - accounting for less than 4% of Afghanistan's opium crop. Despite that small result, Costa says the military campaign has made Afghanistan's farmers far more secretive, further complicating international efforts. "Before, opium stocks were in shacks and warehouses...
...opium have been unaccounted for since 2006 (the figure was about 8,000 tons a year ago). Costa believes the Taliban and drug traffickers in the region have stockpiled the drugs, fearing a crash in world prices if they sold the opium surplus. But the stockpiles could hugely complicate NATO's efforts to eradicate opium in Afghanistan and persuade farmers to grow other crops. That's because while some farmers seem to have switched their production, plenty of opium lies stored, potentially giving the Taliban and drug traffickers the ability to buy off officials with huge sums. Says Costa: "Opium...
...says an Israeli interception of the cargo is the most likely explanation. But this theory, which some Russian analysts put forward in the days after the Arctic Sea was rescued and which Kouts agreed with in his interview with TIME, has been vehemently denied by Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, who says Kouts should stop "running his mouth." (Read "Girding for the Pirates' Revenge...
...Speaking to TIME, NATO envoy Rogozin backed up the investigator's statement: "The cargo has to be checked to see if there was something illegal, something being smuggled." But he declined to comment on the theory of Israeli interception. "This is no longer a question for diplomats or for the military," he said. "It is now a question for the investigators, and they are carrying on with their work. We are also very curious to hear their findings." (See pictures of the face of modern piracy...