What do the United States government and the Taliban have in common? Unbridled fanaticism. When the U.S. government gave $43 million to the Taliban, in exchange for the Taliban declaring opium poppy farms to be “against the will of God,” the United States sought to fuel its own fanatical obsession, the War on Drugs. Despite U.S. knowledge that the Taliban was an oppressive ‘rogue regime’ of religious fundamentalists with documented abuses of human rights, the U.S. government ignored the Taliban’s systematized cruelties in order to push its own domestic and dogmatic anti-drug agenda. In the wake of the 9.11 calamities, it is grotesquely ironic that “we” gave millions in anti-drug aid to Afghanistan’s Taliban, the regime that, in addition to committing countless crimes against Afghani people, still harbors bin Laden and his network of suspected terrorists. By militarizing the Taliban to punish Afghani farmers growing opium poppies – farmers desperate for a cash crop to feed their families in a country of decimated agricultural infrastructure – the U.S. government may have indirectly subsidized terrorism. Just one more example of the Drug War causing more harm than good.Wrye Sententia
associate director
Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics
Davis, Calif.
War on Drugs aids Taliban cause
