It’s no particular secret that a lot of the heroin that ends up in Western Europe can be traced to the Poppy fields of Afghanistan.
In a country where a field of Poppies can net a farmer well over ten times the profit (and often a lot more than that) of a field of wheat and where the cost of living often exceeds the profits of growing legal crops, the problems in dealing with the production of opium is obvious.
What is interesting about this new article from the BBC is that they are alleging that the former Taliban are now taking a lot of the profit from the current trade in opium.
If you remember back a few years to the time when the Taliban were in control of Afghanistan, you might remember that one of their very few governmental successes was in fact erradicating the opium trade in that country. But now, when times are a little tougher the Taliban is allegedly making its living from the very thing they purported to detest.
If that is accurate then it would seem that times have indeed changed.
Technorati Tags: afghanistan, taliban, opium, heroin, drugs