Imperialism and illicit drugs commonly go together. However, with Taliban opium eradication efforts in full effect, heroin is in short supply, and experts fear that a new fentanyl crisis could be brewing in the US.
  • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Intelligence agencies love the drug trade because:

    1. It’s easy (certainly for a state actor) dark money
    2. It’s ubiquitous
    3. It gives you blackmail material on all sorts of useful people
    4. It gives you the proven ability to smuggle bulk quantities across the globe
    5. Who is going to blow the whistle on you?
  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Weird headline. The US was trafficking heroin.

    idk if the article mentions it but Afghanistan has often had a horrible opiate problem. The Taliban crackdown on poppy cultivation is one of a very, very small number of “I guess I have to give it to them in this one very specific instance”.

    And as near as I can tell there’s nothing cynical about this. The Taliban wants to stop local opioid production because of the horrific harm it does to Afghanis.

  • pjhenry1216@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    This is one of the dumbest articles I ever read. The entire government changed. Taliban can be dictators. The US couldn’t. On top of this, they essentially had two years to switch to wheat before this occurred. Something that was less economically feasible over two years ago due to an unfortunate food shortage in the area now.

    Asking why someone couldn’t get something done as quickly as a dictator is something a naive child asks.

  • unscholarly_source@lemmy.ca
    0·
    1 year ago

    I mean… Sure there are major improvements that can be had in the US, but punishment and consequences as defined in Sharia law isn’t exactly something that the US can simply adopt.

    • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      Three million dead due to the Afghanistan war alone wasn’t brutal enough for you?

      The systematic, institutional rape and torture of men, women, and children in Abu Ghraib was more brutal than anything defined in Sharia law but we still pretend that the occupation was clean.

      • Smoogy@kbin.social
        0·
        1 year ago

        Both can be wrong, Sounds like you’re just here to derail into having a different conversation you want to have entirely separate to the topic rather than addressing the actual topic.

        • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
          0·
          1 year ago

          I’m staying on topic.

          I am demonstrating how the American occupational forces handed out harsher punishments and consequences than the Taliban did, yet couldn’t curb opium production. Ergo, the Americans were never interested in curbing opium production.

          • bluGill@kbin.social
            0·
            1 year ago

            The Americans didn’t intend to kill all those people. They intended to kill soldiers, and lots of other people who they deemed evil, but growing drugs was never deemed evil enough to be worth killing someone over. The Taliban intended to kill those growing drugs, along with a lot of other people doing things they deem to be evil I’ll leave moral judgements to you.

  • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’m so tired of all this authoritarian propaganda on Lemmy, it’s killing the community

  • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
    01·
    1 year ago

    LOL. Raises questions for whom? Libs? Everyone knows what the fucking USA was doing all along. Except the libs.

    NB: both USA Rs and Ds are both liberal in their political philosophy and are both subject to this critique.