In a report issued to the UN Security Council in June of this year, a special Security Council Committee reported that “the primary sources of Taliban financing remain criminal activities, including drug trafficking and opium poppy production.” The summary of the brief report states that “the issue of narcotics in Afghanistan – the production and trafficking of poppy-based drugs and methamphetamine – remains … the Taliban’s largest single source of income. It also has a destabilizing and corrupting effect within Afghanistan and contributes significantly to the narcotics challenges facing the wider international community.”
Some of the media coverage of the report, such as by Reuters, added comments by Cesar Gudes, the head of the Kabul office of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), who said: “The Taliban have counted on the Afghan opium trade as one of their main sources of income. More production brings drugs with a cheaper and more attractive price, and therefore a wider accessibility.”
The UNODC has in fact reported on the link of Taliban – or elements of the Taliban — to the opium trade for decades. For example, in November 2008 UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa released the Afghan Opium Survey 2008 which reported that “opium finances the Taliban war economy,” and stated for the press: “For a number of years, Afghan opium production has exceeded world demand. The bottom should have fallen out of the opium market, but it hasn’t. So where is the missing opium? Lack of price response in the opium market can only be the result of stock build-ups, and all evidence points to the Taliban.”
But let’s look higher up the control chain – which the mass media always refuse to do. The drug trade is not run by the Taliban — not in Afghanistan, and certainly not in the world. Responsibility for that goes to Dope, Inc., the British-run multinational financial syndicate, which was first exposed in the best-seller commissioned by Lyndon LaRouche, Dope, Inc. (first edition published in 1978).