From Barrons:The Taliban and the drug trade. Ecological Intelligence. And a memoir masked as a novel.
AFGHANISTAN MAY NOT BE WHAT YOU thought it was. According to Seeds of Terror, most of the Taliban's religious fanatics have been replaced by organized gangs of big-time drug thugs whose primary goal is to protect their cut of the multi-billion-dollar Afghan heroin trade. In this book, which is subtitled How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda, Gretchen Peters estimates that the Taliban gets at least 70% of its funding from the heroin trade, and that both Hezbollah and Al Qaeda also benefit from global dope.
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Update: No more opium, no more money for Afghan villagers -- AP
My Comment: Both stories on the Afghan drug trade are worth the time to read.