Pakistan Crisis

[Mage246]

One of the advantages of the war on drugs is that we didn't have to care about the feelings of the locals. Eradicating drug crops doesn't create more drug crop farmers.

Makes more terrorists though, as for many people the poppies are a large source of the farmers bread basket.

Yup, and that was my point. A war on drugs doesn't care about terrorists. A war on terrorists does.

 

[Kobrag]

And both have achieved nothing but death and only mere slight deviations from the numbers that caused their creation.

 

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

But these days you can't really do anything without someone somewhere dying. If you do nothing, you end up being the one dying instead.

 

[Bromden]

If your people can't go abroad without killing someone, you shouldn't organize such mass tourism events.

 

[Jhessail]

Assuming, of course, that all the poppy farming operations were totally independent. Which I highly doubt.

They weren't, but the profits actually went to the semi-independent warlords. While Taliban was in power, they waged their own war on drugs, with beheadings and all the fun stuff. Export of drugs dropped radically, and only rose again after Taliban was driven to the mountains. It seems that Taliban has relaxed their stance on poppy-farming, as a easy method of generating income - so now basically both sides are drug lords as well.

 

[Vermillion_Hawk]

To be honest I'm surprised the Taliban hadn't capitalized on that operation sooner. If I was a regime like that, that'd be one of the first thing I'd look to to make money.

 

[Mage246]

If you were an ultra-conservative theocracy devoted mostly to issues of public morality, the first thing you would do is try to sell drugs? 

 

[Bromden]

Selling drugs to infidels isn't shunned by them. And it was always a source of profit for the Taliban, except for a year or two around 2000, when they held back on export to pump up the prices.

 

[Mage246]

They tried to stop the drug trade because it inevitably led to domestic drug use.

 

[Bromden]

See edit.

 

[Vermillion_Hawk]

If you were an ultra-conservative theocracy devoted mostly to issues of public morality, the first thing you would do is try to sell drugs? 

Hey, America in the Cold War did it, so there's a precedent for an ultra-conservative theocracy doing it.

 

[Sir Saladin]

Selling drugs to infidels isn't shunned by them. And it was always a source of profit for the Taliban, except for a year or two around 2000, when they held back on export to pump up the prices.

They wouldn't stop opium production and cut off the income from it for a year or two to boost the price of something that is always in high demand anyway. It isn't so hard to believe that the religiously fanatical element was behind the reduction but then had to give in to the more pragmatic leaders.

 

[Bromden]

Who- and whatever was behind the opium stop, it didn't last more than a year. If it was a business move or the fanatics decided they needed the profits after all to fight the invading army, doesn't really matter (for me, at least). The important thing is that junkies around the world can get their brown, and both sides' actions support that mission.

 

[Mage246]

It didn't last more than a year because the Taliban were toppled in a year. 

 

[Bromden]

Really? Who are the army still fighting against then?

 

[Mage246]

I can't tell if you're just being stubborn, or if you really can't see how the actions of an insurgency movement might differ from those that the movement took when it was the official government.

 

[Bromden]

Do they have territories still under their control? If yes, they aren't really toppled.

 

[pentagathus]

They were pretty well toppled for a while. We toppled them the **** over.

 

[Llew2]

They were pretty well toppled for a while. We toppled them the **** over.

For some reason that made me laugh. 

 

[Jhessail]

Do they have territories still under their control? If yes, they aren't really toppled.

"Ruling" a handful of caves high up in the mountains is nowhere near equal to having territories under control. Or do you also think the Ukrainian Liberation Army in 1946 was "in power" because the Red Army hadn't gotten around to rooting them out from the forests and marshes of Ukraine? No, obviously not. Taliban lost power but was not eradicated as a movement, and has now returned, in the last four-five years, to be a power to reckon with again.