Taliban's Diverse Funding Might Make It Impossible To Restrict Cash Flow

Washington Post:

KABUL -- The Taliban-led insurgency has built a fundraising juggernaut that generates cash from such an array of criminal rackets, donations, taxes, shakedowns and other schemes that U.S. and Afghan officials say it may be impossible to choke off the movement's money supply.

Read the whole story: Washington Post

Comments

[S1m0n]

The only success any eradication program has had in Afghanistan came when the Clinton administration paid the Taliban government to eliminate opium on the territories it controlled.

[Ping]

That failed miserably and ended up with the Twin Towers being destroyed.It's time to introduce the Afghans to modernity. They need to be taught the high price of drug dealing.

[Acharn]

You mean the high profits of drug dealing? As long as Americans are willing to buy drugs the cartels will flourish. When are you going to realize there is a part of our population which absolutely will not give up their drugs, and a lot of them are rich or at least well-to-do. May of them are celebrities. These are people who say things like, "Cocaine is God's way of telling you you make too much money."

The U.S. should adopt a program of buying all the opium produced in Afghanistan, paying a premium over what the Taliban are willing to pay. Then we can choose to destroy it, or produce legal drugs at a moderate price, or sell our own heroin to our own people and keep the money in our own country. Either that or impose, and ENFORCE, the death penalty for possession of drugs.

[einstein10]

Get OUT of Afghanistan NOW. NO war!

[einstein10]

Is this what the Afghanistan occupation is all about?

93% of heroin comes from Afghanistan. Who's getting it out of Afghanistan? With the all-seeing Homeland Security how is it getting here? Who's making the record profits?

READ: Young and Suburban, and Falling for Heroin By CARA BUCKLEY Published: September 25, 2009 NYT

[TLV]

Nice picture of the p.o.p.p.i.e.s. 'Bout time! That's why we are there, you know.

[LeeCalif]

This is a Pentagon US propaganda story run by the Post and then this website.

It is nothing more than PURE propaganda to be consumed by the ign o rant masses.

There is supposition,unnamed sources, guesses and abslutely NO CONCRETE EVIDENCE listed.

Are you that stooopid ?

[Kache]

The conspiracy freaks meet down the hall in room 007, Lee.

[TLV]

It is ALL about the drug. Always has been. Then comes the access to Iraqi oil. Tit for tat.

[Kache]

Once again our great military minds are looking at the problem through the wrong end of the telescope. And once again, it's also a telescope that's mounted on the barrel of a gun.

The Taliban is not just buying poppy in the villages - they are buying influence. No one ever argues with, or votes against, their source of livelihood - doesn't happen here, wont happen there. As long as the Taliban offers the highest price for a crop the village can grow, they are buying the alligence of the village. This is not a war fought by guys toting guns because it being won by guys toting wallets. Money talks and our GIs walk, just that simple.

Until we either outbid the Taliban for the poppy crop (a piddling 100 million!!) or outbid them for any other crop the Afghan villager can grow, we're just throwing soldiers into a bottomless pit. What's crazy is, we're supposed to be the capitalists and we can't even remenber how it works down at the village level.

[CigarGod]

Interesting post.
Fav'd.

[LITU]

An excellent observation. I wonder, though, if and when the money would be handed over to the farmers would they donate to the Taliban under a different stimulus, such as extortion?

[Kache]

The money is irrelevant. If the Taliban extorted the money they would lose influence. They would not be the source of livelihood, they would be common bandits and thieves. It does not matter how much money the Taliban has if they can not buy influence with it. And it does not matter how many billions we spend there if we are not buying influence with it.

Again, no one, anywhere, ever bits the hand that feeds it. Does not happen. The villagers simply would not take our money and willingly hand it over to the Taliban, risking an end to the cash-flow, rather than spend it improving their lives.

We spent 40 times more money each year subsidizing our US cotton crop than it would cost to buy 100% of the Afghan poppy crop per year. We could spend 1/40th that subsidy paying Afghan farmers to grow cotton, etremely poor cotton, cotton so poor we might have to burn it, and buy more influence than 200,000 soldiers could get kicking down doors.

[bascombe]

the taliban must think they are an american health insurance company. quick! call baucus and rahm!

[WilliePilgrim]

The solution to the problems in Afghanistan is not going to be easy but undermining the Taliban's, access to money from poppies (as well as the warlords and for that matter the international drug trades') could be as easy as having the UN create an agency whose sole purpose is to buy all the opium that the farmers grow and see that the farmers are given the rewards directly so it wont be funnelled through the woefully corruption prone government that they now have. The idea that we can somehow convince the farmers that they should grow some other commodity flies in the face of reason and 2 thousand years of tradition. If the forces of destabilization switch to another commodity, buy that market too. The country needs a working cash economy that comes from the labor of the people, not from some give-away aid channelled through the feudal chiefdoms. Once the get a taste of real money and the things it will buy to improve the lives of its people, like schools, and machinery and communications the age old relationships will wither as they have everywhere else modernity has taken hold.

[Ping]

That has been tried before and it has never worked. When we allowed the Hmong to grow it, it only ended up spreading aids in Southeast Asia after we left. When we did it in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan conflict it only spread drug addiction to Pakistan after we left.

Nothing good has ever come out of allowing anyone to grow poppy.

[unitron]

So you're saying don't let them grow it and don't pay them not to grow it, just burn their fields and bask in their eternal friendship?

[Kache]

Just "burn the crop" has not worked in Columbia, and we've been doing it for 40 years! It's the longest civil war on 500 years. Thanks but no thanks ping, we're not doing that in Afghanistan.

Starving the Afghan country-side into submission will not work. And that's all you have to offer. If we do not replace the Taliban as the source of livelihood in the country-side, then nothing changes and we lose the war to the guys who understand the value of money over guns.

[jsarets]

The Taliban is the most vehemently anti-drug political organization in the world. When they were in power, they eradicated 91% of the opium harvest in one year -- just months before we invaded.

Like most underdeveloped nations, Afghanistan faces the resource curse: the vast majority of the value of their resources is claimed by foreign investors, while the local producers remain in poverty.

The Taliban understands that opium production is a socioeconomic blight on the Afghan people. If they weren't being hunted by the U.S. military, they would be halting opium production.

[jumperpin]

All very good points.

Whereas the Taliban were passive hosts for OBL, they were a more palatable target than the Saudi families who, unwittingly or otherwise, ultimately finance(d) Al Qaida.

[Tulka2]

What is the highest value in the material world for the typical Afghani.....?

Water. Water and gardens.

Buy all their poppies. Poppy is the best thing for any Afghani farmer to grow in the high, arid place of gritty, clay soil. Require our Pharmaceutical Industry to use it. Oh, they would rather patent synthetic opiates and charge us the moon, but we might as well as use one of God's green plants. Let Big Pharma make money off some other ghoulish thing.

Build the people of Afghanistan water parks. Put them next to schools and hospitals.

You think the Taliban will be able to blow that up? No.

[Ping]

And when we leave they will sell it the Pakistanis like they did before and create social unrest in Pakistan. The only way to defeat the Taliban is to not allow another poppy crop to come to harvest.

[marbou]

The Talibans get their money from Saudi Arabia and the other oil rich Gulf countries via the Pakistanese ISI. The Taliban had wiped out the poppy culture in the nineties. Only after the US invaded Afghanistan did they encourage farmers to grow the poppies again. This newly found drug money goes to financing the CIA and is also a godsend to the Wall Street Banksters who have never asked any questions about where the money comes from when someone comes to them with millions.
http://www.drugwar.com/fittsnarco1.shtm
Read this 13 part series. This will help you fill in the blanks.

[bascombe]

as we enter the post-empire era and our country bankrupts itself following delusions of imperial hegemony, we never fail to ignore the seeds of our own and the world's destruction that we have sown.

[rollingdivision]

The new Vietnam like rules of engagement for US soldiers are causing more causalities and costing lives.

[jsarets]

This is a fundamental problem with counterinsurgency.

[jsarets]

The Taliban has been financed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia since its inception in the mid-90s as a Sunni uprising against the Shia warlords of the Mujahideen, who were left in charge after repelling the Soviet invasion with the help of the CIA and were later reconstituted as the Northern Alliance.

The Pakistani ISI has consistently supported Afghan insurgent groups against foreign invaders who seek geopolitical influence in the region, and the Saudi Wahhabist establishment has consistently supported Islamic fundamentalist groups against secular imperialists on ideological grounds.

As Rudyard Kipling famously noted over a century ago, in Afghanistan, when they're not fighting a foreign invader, they're fighting amongst themselves -- with a lot less money involved, I might add.

The only people who care about the rivalry between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance are the local warlords thereof. The foreign sponsors, including Osama bin Laden, supported one side against the Soviet Union and then switched to the other side against the United States.

Afghanistan is the place where superpowers go to die simply because it's also the place where anti-imperialists go to kill superpowers. It's a final frontier against what they see as a global financial conspiracy (for which they blame a certain religious group) that has conquered the rest of the world.

[BigBrickHouse]

Hind-sight is always 20-20

[wadenelson1]

Nine years ago the Taliban briefly gave aid and comfort to our enemy, bin Ladin, and his gang of Al-Quaida thugs. They refused to turn him over to us, although there are rumors they WERE willing to turn him over to a 3rd country.

Never mind we could have extradited him or kidnapped him from THERE.

And for this, we have decided to make a mortal, eternal enemy out of the Taliban?

We are NOT going to defeat them. It is their country.

At most the Taliban is, or was, the "friend" of our "enemy."

I suggest this war is horribly misguided. Get bin Ladin and get the eff out of Afghanistan.

[Ping]

Get bin Ladin and get the eff out of Afghanistan.

I agree 100%. And burn every poppy field on the way out.

[TLV]

We are there to keep the poppies growing, fool!

[barkrudedog69]

there is the small issue of acid in the face of small girls....trying to get an ra.petion....ra.pe, beatings, and death to those that do not follow the moral police.....and the fact they tried to take over Pakistan....

but hey...with friends like that....who needs contractors....right?

[S1m0n]

And the other small matter of members of the Afghan national army and police raping little boys on NATO-controlled bases.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/abuse+silence+exposed/2010032/story.html

our soldiers are over there dying to make Afghanistan safe for paedophiles.

[barkrudedog69]

By 1988, bin Laden had split from Maktab al-Khidamat, while Azzam acted as support for Afghan fighters, Laden wanted a more military role. One of the main leading points to the split and the creation of al-Qaeda was the insistence of Azzam that Arab fighters be integrated among the Afghan fighting groups instead of forming their separate fighting force.

1988 to 2001.....well I guess that is a short time.....

[barkrudedog69]

In the 1980s, Azzam traveled throughout the Middle East, Europe and North America, including 50 cities in the United States, to raise money and preach about jihad. He inspired young Muslims with stories of miraculous deeds, mujahideen who defeated vast columns of Soviet troops virtually single-handed, who had been run over by tanks but survived, who were shot but unscathed by bullets. Angels were witnessed riding into battle on horseback, and falling bombs were intercepted by birds, which raced ahead of the jets to form a protective canopy over the warriors. [12] Critics complain these stories proliferated because Sheikh Abdullah paid mujahids to bring "him wonderful tales."[13]

Just to keep it in perspective.

[bascombe]

was there ever a been laden?

[Ping]

Burn every poppy field in Afghanistan.

[Babele]

...and so easily done. Wonder why we don't do it?

Sibel Edmonds might have the answer.

[TLV]

Turrrkkkeee is so grateful for our troops.

[unitron]

"Burn every poppy field in Afghanistan."

It would be smarter, easier, and cheaper to pay the farmers to not grow poppies.

[Ping]

No. that has failed in the past. No poppy crop should ever be allowed to come to harvest.

[fcsakes]

It is the only source of income for many of the farmers there and while I am sure they would rather be growing crops of perhaps lesser value, yet greater profit for human beings, such a thing would hurt them immensely.

The medicinal value of these drugs is enormous - suggest we buy the crops ourselves. All the crops.

[crazyantipodian]

When you take into consideration that $400 million divided by the entire population is roughly a $20K income for every individual in Afghanistan then buying the entire crop for medical purposes is the only sane, logical and inexpensive option. But that would conflict against big pharma wouldn't it! Maybe get them to control the market, that way they would become worthwhile on this planet!

[Ping]

If you want the US troops out of Afghanistan then allowing the poppies to be harvested will only prolong the suffering for us and them. To be successful in Afghanistan by eliminating Al Qaida, it is necessary to destroy the poppy crop. The farmers can grow another crop.