Word: talibanize
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...usually accounts for more than 90% of the world's heroin. The price that Afghan farmers get for their opium has also crashed, dropping by a third since last summer, from about $30 a pound ($70 per kilogram) to about $20 a pound ($48 a kilogram). (Read "Is the Taliban Stockpiling Opium...
Still, the U.N. report says, many Afghan farmers have apparently chosen to switch out of opium. The reasons might lie in simple market factors of supply and demand. In the years immediately following the Taliban's ouster in 2001, Afghan farmers, who had languished under a temporary Taliban ban against growing poppies, produced huge bumper crops. Those were harvested just as drug users in Europe, opium's biggest market, began to shun heroin in favor of cocaine and synthetic drugs like ecstasy. "There is definitely an issue of stocks over consumption," Costa says. "Starting in about 2006 Afghanistan has been...
That glut, however, could spell disaster down the road. U.N. drug officials estimate about 10,000 tons of 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...
...Wednesday's shooting has raised fears of a renewed campaign of violence in Pakistan's major cities after a lull following the counterinsurgency operation in the northwest Swat Valley and the assassination of Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a CIA drone strike on Aug. 5. (Read: "Hakimullah Mehsud: The New Head of Pakistan's Taliban...
...attack on the minister comes a day after the Interior Ministry said there were unspecified reports of a Taliban campaign to target religious and political leaders. Analysts say that the notoriously vicious new leader of the Pakistani Taliban Hakimullah Mehsud is keen to assert himself after assuming the leadership of the organization. But there is also speculation that any new campaign might be the work of al-Qaeda. Last week, Saudi Arabia's deputy interior minister survived an al-Qaeda suicide bomb attack in the port city of Jeddah. (See pictures of Osama Bin Laden...