This really says it all about the true nature of the US and UK-led occupation of Afghanistan. It’s perhaps no coincidence that just months after NATO vacated Afghanistan following its arduous 20-year occupation, the Taliban come to power and promptly shut down the production of heroin producing poppies for export.
It’s important to note how back in 2001, the Taliban actually received an award from the United Nations in New York for successfully shutting down most of the country’s poppy cultivation trade from the late 1990s. After 9/11 and the US-led invasion and occupation of their country, poppy production suddenly soared to record-breaking heights – which saw the street price for heroin plummet in the West, leading to one of the biggest heroin and opiate epidemics in US and European history. Many believe this fact speaks to the role which the illegal narcotics trade plays as an economic driver of the US-led global War on Terror.
Perhaps unintentionally, the western mainstream media are basically admitting this point, by virtue of how they have framed this latest news, tacitly admitting that NATO did nothing to stem the tide of drugs flowing from Afghanistan to the West: “Drug control has been one of the international community’s major demands of the Islamist group, which regained power in August and is trying to wind back sanctions.”
Here’s the latest announcement from the Taliban…
KABUL – The Taliban announced on Sunday a ban on the cultivation of narcotics in Afghanistan, the world’s biggest opium producer.
“All Afghans are informed that from now on, cultivation of poppy has been strictly prohibited across the country,” according to an order from the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada.
“If anyone violates the decree, the crop will be destroyed immediately and the violator will be treated according to the Sharia law,” said the order, announced at a news conference by the Ministry of Interior in Kabul, reports Reuters.
READ MORE AFGHANISTAN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Afghanistan Files
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