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Taliban's Massively Successful Opium Eradication Raises Questions About What US Was Doing All Along (www.mintpressnews.com)

submitted 1 year ago by NightOwl@lemm.ee to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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[-] whiskeypickle@lemmy.ml 106 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

lmao, no it doesn’t. the US didn’t go to Afghanistan to eradicate opium. the US didn’t give a shit about it at all, lmao.

do tankies so blindly hate the US that they’ll give the Taliban a bj just to try to make the US look bad? wow...

[-] NightOwl@lemm.ee 85 points 1 year ago

The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War is a summary of the Washington Post's reporting on Afghanistan, specifically on the US government's own internal assessments from all levels of the military and political administration. In it, you'll find this quote:

Of all the failures in Afghanistan, the war on opium ranked among the most feckless. During two decades, the United States spent more than $9 billion on a dizzying array of programs to deter Afghanistan from supplying the world with heroin. None of the measures worked. In many cases, they made things worse.

The US doesn't need "tankies" or anyone else to make themselves look bad as far as the Afghan drug trade goes.

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[-] Fazoo@lemmy.ml 79 points 1 year ago

We also didn't threaten to kill the farmers for growing it. No shit the Taliban was successful. Comply or die. They're the ones who were profiting from it anyway. Now that they're in charge again, religion trumps financial needs.

[-] CamaradeBoina@hexbear.net 41 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure the Talibans (not to defend them, mind you), were already cracking down on poppy farming before 9/11 and the subsequent decade long war.

So how were they benefitting? Or do you mean to say the US and allied forces allowed mass poppy crop farming that was then utilized by the Taliban to fund itself? You know there is an alternative hypothesis: the US and other occupation allied forces tolerated poppy farming to pacify and win over tribal chiefs and keep corrupt Afghan officials squarely on their side. Maybe both were happening, who is to say.