According to Carlotta Gall in Kabul a major problem we are facing today are the Taliban in Afghanistan. They are running a sophisticated financial network to pay their insurgent operations, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from illicit drug trade, extortion, kidnappings and foreign donations.
Tax the cultivation is a strategy the Taliban imposed but also processing and shipment of opium and other crops like wheat grown in the area they control. Officials estimate that the revenue vary but from at least $70 million to $400 million a year according to Pentagon.
How the Taliban receive money from the drug trade: At the farm:
Taliban commanders charge poppy farmers a 10% tax, and Taliban fighters can make extra money harvesting poppy from fields.
At the lab:
The Taliban get taxes from traders who collect opium paste from farmers and take it to labs, where it is turned into heroin. The Talibans are paid to protect the labs.
On the road:
Truckers pay the Taliban a transit tariff on opium paste or heroin as it is smuggled out of the country.
At the top:
Drug trafficking organizations make large regular payments to the Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s governing body.
United States may have solved one problem in Middle East but created several others...?
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