As Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche said in a recent tweet, every day of frozen assets and sanctions against the Taliban government expands the power of the foreign heroin-trafficking networks that get the big money, and domestic druglords, who tax opium farmers.
The Telegraph in London interviewed some farmers in the opium-growing region of Helmand province who say they are preparing to plant poppies again. “If the Taliban wants to ban poppy cultivation, we want them to make a good government and prepare economic growth jobs and everything. If they can’t do that, we will grow opium,” a farmer said.
In order to implement their ban, the Taliban need to finance crop substitution, which had worked under Pino Arlacchi’s UN program until 2001. Thus, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others who are imposing sanctions on Afghanistan are responsible for the continuation of narcotics production.
Increased heroin production is not the only danger looming from a continuation of the sanctions. A report issued yesterday by the EU-connected European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), warns that European nations should also be prepared for a possible flood of extremely cheap, pure methamphetamine now being produced in Afghanistan.
