idk if the article mentions it but Afghanistan has often had a horrible opiate problem. The Taliban crackdown on poppy cultivation is one of a very, very small number of “I guess I have to give it to them in this one very specific instance”.
And as near as I can tell there’s nothing cynical about this. The Taliban wants to stop local opioid production because of the horrific harm it does to Afghanis.
Kind of make sense that Opium is eradicated since there is an embargo preventing export, causing an economy collapse. Any government regardless of their ideology leanings that wants to preserve power would switch their cash crops into sustenance crops.
See Cuba and the DPRK after the 90s or China post-split
Again this is not a pro-Taliban statement, this is just how insurrection happens to take over a country by building a parallel economy and governance within the country or global economy (see 1st Chinese Civil War until the defeat of the KMT by the communist force)
La Corporacion: the biggest Bolivian cocaine cartel, the “GM of cocaine”, started with the cooperation and protection of the CIA according to a DEA agent whose investigations into them were repeatedly thwarted by the State Dept and CIA
Los Zetas, one of the most notorious cartels which normalized the paramilitary aesthetics and functions of cartels, was founded by School of the Americas graduates.
The DFS is a former Mexican intelligence agency that oversaw the assassinations and torture of communists and supposed communists. It was founded by the CIA, and partially funded and trained by the CIA. Several members later went on to use their training and field experience to start their own cartels as well. One of which led to the creation of el chapo
To be technical, did the US actually fund the Taliban when it got started? The Pakistani intelligence service did, and the Taliban were only able to take power because of the US-backed Mujahideen alliance rapidly descended into civil war when the Soviets pulled out and the Afghan government fell, but idk.
All the armaments the US supplied (most of which actually came from China) to the Mujahideen was distributed by Pakistani intelligence services - that is true. However, the US knew perfectly well who the Pakistanis were giving these weapons to - it had been longstanding US foreign policy SOP to nurture and support far-right, reactionary Islamism as a counter to middle-eastern nationalism. That’s the reason the “big bads” in the middle-east now are people like Osama and not people like Arafat.
I’m obviously biased as an accursed tankie myself, but looking at this thread:
1.) The article wasn’t even posted by a hexbear user.
2.) The level of discourse seems to be pretty level between hexbear natives and other users.
3.) The failure of the US to fight illicit opium production in Afghanistan, despite it being a public aim of the US and its allied government in Afghanistan, is well documented. Just doing a quick look, here’s a New York post article (I know, I know, but it’s well sourced, and certainly not leftist): Why the only winner of America’s war in Afghanistan is opium . It cites the Afghanistan papers and a variety of US and Afghan officials, and illustrates a timeline on how every program implemented by the US to combat opium production only intensified cultivation. The success of the Taliban government in cracking down on it despite far more limited resources suggests either gross incompetence or malice on the part of the US government.
EDIT: I will also point out that the harshest criticism of the US here is from a user from your own instance. That wouldn’t even be allowed on hexbear, so glass houses.
Their complaint with The Donald is that they were mean, and we’re mean, so we must be exactly the same, because liberalism is about being civil and fascism is about being incivil.
You see, brigading is when content that I am interested in is algorithmically prioritized in my feed and I interact with it. The more algorithmically prioritized the content is, the more it’s an inorganic brigade.
No dont you understand Hexbear is an evil cabal who organizes raiding certain posts. What? You cant see that anywhere on their instance? Huh… they must be hiding it… uh… somewhere.
Whenever leftists post outside of their home instance it inevitably breaks down into a rehashed version of “This is America, why can’t you speak American?”
This entire thread is justification for telling hexbear to fuck off.
Why exactly? You have not given a reason. Vaguely gesturing at the thread full of people criticising the US is not a very good reason, unless you are an angry american nationalist.
Glad to see that your instance filter is working. Everyone should be free to curate the content they see.
For the benefit of others, checking your comment history, it is hilarious to me that you’ve never posted in your home instance even once and have the audacity to call us brigadiers.
The us was using opium as a weapon of war against russia and iran. Its well known and the public health concequences in both those countries were horrific
But since mexico has orders of mag itude more state capacity than the taliban their failure to solve opium problem makes one almost certain the us goverment is also behind that.
You got a source on that? Last I checked Opium is an excellent cash crop that the Taliban used to fund their guerilla war with the US. Now that the Americans are out there is no point to keep growing it.
Just search opium in russia or opium in iran. You will see that its a huge problem there. You will also see both countries complaining to the us that they are maliciously increasing opium production.
Last I checked Opium is an excellent cash crop that the Taliban used to fund their guerilla war with the US. Now that the Americans are out there is no point to keep growing it.
The source for that claim is entirely from the US state department. Not to mention some expert disputed that claim
“The estimated all-time high for opium production was set in 2017 at 9,900 tons worth some $1.4 billion in sales by farmers or roughly 7% of Afghanistan’s GDP, the UNODC reported.”
“Mansfield says his field studies show the most the Taliban can earn from illicit opiates is about $40 million annually”
So the Taliban made at most 40 million per year while the entire country (under US occupation and control) made over 1 billion per year
USA frooze the National Reserves of Afgahnistan after their Ho Chi Ming City Replay , thereby actually punging Afgahnistan into Starvation crisis und accelerating the switch from Cash Crop to Food Production , this has now increased the Water Use in the helmaz river valley thereby is leading to borderclashes with iran over the water use.
Not really. The river was also closed to iran during the american ocupation. In fact the taliban actually released watter at some point. Less than they should have but more than the previous regime.
The border clashes have nothing to do with that and more to do with the taliban organization being run more like a mcdonalds than a regular state. Sometimes a franchise owner decide they want to invade iran and get into a shootout. But the central command in unaware of that.
During the time of the US occupation of Afghanistan, opium from the region comprised a full 90% of the world’s heroin supply. So I would say “the same thing they’ve been doing since at least the days of the Vietnam War and the Golden Triangle.”
This is the kind of stupid article that someone publishes to make tankies look fucking stupid, and then tankies rush to defend it because they have completely lost the plot.
No, it doesn’t raise questions. We knew back in 2003 that there was never a long-term plan. The point was to kill a guy, and then to do some military spending. A major success, on those lines.
I’m not sure if you noticed but when you’re scrolling down your feed list, just below the link itself is a little bit of text that shows the source. Just read it … takes a fraction of a second… and if it’s from somewhere you don’t like then don’t open it. Just move on.
Moderators … please pay no attention to posters like this, you’re doing a fine job and we thank you. Keep the news coming from various sources abd let us decide for ourselves if we want to read it. Like adults.
Well I mean barring your personal dislike of the source, it does report an objective fact: opium cash crop farming exploded under the US / Joint alliance occupation and decade+long anti insurgency war, and died out once they left.
And this objective fact DOES raise important questions: what in the hell was the US doing all this time? They had infinitely more resources than the Talibans do now to subsidize non opium crops for farmers, to encourage diversification and development, etc. Did they turn a blind eye to the mass scale poppy farming? If so, why? It generated huge sums, was it a strategic use of and encouragement of corruption of local Afghan administrators and tribal elite to “make the occupation easier”? Did some money return to western elements? What was the impact on world trafficking?
Like you can dislike mintpress news but IMO it’s important to, now that the US/West occupation of Afghanistan is over, not swipe it all under the rug and investigate.
Fighting the Taliban? The objectives had nothing to do with the war on drugs. I thought it was well known that the reason there was hardly any opium farming in Afganistan before the invasion was because of the Taliban.
We can go on about how the invasion failed catastrophically but. This is just Afganistan going back to the way it was.
If you’re so much of an intellectual coward that the only thing you can do is cry propaganda when presented with a dissenting opinion, then you should go back to reddit.
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