Taliban using poppy crop to fund fighting

[LahoreEstate]

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Gretchen Peters, an American author, has alleged the Taliban insurgency is funded through the heroin trade.

Peters told Voice of America the Taliban are better funded today than they were soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City. She said the Taliban get more than 70 percent of their funds from opium, and also claimed there is circumstantial evidence of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden’s involvement in the drug trade.

Peters, who has reported from Pakistan and Afghanistan for the Associated Press and the ABC News, said the US must disrupt the Taliban’s heroin money trail. “While the insurgents earn some money from collecting taxes from the farmers, the bulk of the earnings come from protecting the trade, protecting the convoys and protecting the refineries and taxing the refineries and yet we are not going after that element of it,” she said.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...2009_pg1_8