Word: opiumeators
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...harbored by the Islamic extremist Taliban government. But the enemy escaped into Pakistan, and for the past seven years, Afghanistan has been a slow bleed against an array of mostly indigenous narco-jihadi-tribal guerrilla forces that we continue to call the "Taliban." These ragtag bands are funded by opium profits and led by assorted religious extremists and druglords, many of whom have safe havens in Pakistan...
...after the drug trade that funds the insurgency, in part because some of the proceeds are also skimmed by the friends, officials and perhaps family members of the stupendously corrupt government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Helmand province is mostly desert, but it produces half the world's opium supply along a narrow strip of irrigated land that straddles the Helmand River. The drug trade - Afghanistan provides more than 90% of the world's opium - permeates everything. A former governor, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, was caught with nine tons of opium, enough to force him out of office, but not enough...
...strong central government. It has been governed for thousands of years by local and regional tribal coalitions. The tribes have often been at one another's throats - a good part of the current "Taliban" uprising is nothing more than standard tribal rivalries juiced by Western arms and opium profits - except when foreigners have invaded the area, in which case the Afghans have united and slowly humiliated conquerors from Alexander the Great to the Soviets...
...build them. "It's quite true that Taliban use the roads as well, but it's harder to implant an IED on a paved road than it is on a gravel road," Danzig said. Such improvements also could convince Afghan farmers to plant their fields with something other than opium poppies - the taxing of which has been a key source of funds for the Taliban. "You make it possible," Danzig said, "for farmers to get alternative crops to market in ways that are very difficult absent paved roads...
...there are other possible explanations for the missing opium. While fewer people in Europe and the U.S. use heroin - cocaine is much more popular among young drug users - heroin addiction is a growing problem in Russia and China. The spokesman for the British law-enforcement agency believes that the missing opium could be making its way to these growing markets, which may not yet be showing up on U.N. drug-consumption figures. "Some of the missing opium might also be lost during smuggling or processing, or be stashed everywhere from Kandahar to Turkey - even Western Europe," says Paul Smyth, head...