Inside the Taliban: 'The more troops they send, the more targets we have' (Guardian UK)

"Here, we are all of the same tribe," said a young Pashtun poet and journalist. He had a flimsy beard and eyes the colour of honey. "Ninety-five per cent of the people here support the Taliban. They give the Taliban shelter. The businessmen and traders give them money, and the five per cent who work for the government look the other way and wave you through if you are with Taliban. The tribes here are very strong. It would bring great shame on you to arrest your cousin.

"The situation is very simple here," he continued. "We are Muslims and tribal people, the Taliban are Muslim and from the same tribes, the foreign troops are non-Muslims and there was no referendum from the people to ask them to come here. God told us to fight the occupation so the people are against the occupation. The people are ideologically similar to the Taliban, so the Taliban don't hide, they live with the people."

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"We are Afghans fighting the jihad and defending our country under the leadership of Jalaluddin Haqqani," the commander said. He spoke in a schoolmasterly tone. As well as being a commander, Mawlawi Jalali is a teacher in Haqqani's madrasa.

"The Americans toppled the emirate and we are fighting to bring it back. When the Taliban were here the jihad was only in Afghanistan. Now, thanks to the Americans, the jihad has spread to many other countries."

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"The villagers are good," he said. "They feed us and give us shelter, even if we are 100 men, but sometimes their hearts are weak – they think that the foreigners bring development projects to help them, which is not true. This is why we have to forcefully stop these projects, to protect the villagers."

Yes. And what the recent NATO military operations are showing us is that the Taliban are much closer to running the business than we thought. NATO has been seizing precursors, seeds, opium, laboratory equipment, arms, pickup trucks—all sorts of insurgent equipment in drug markets and warehouses that have been attacked. All of this suggests the insurgents are very, very, very heavily involved in the trading itself. This is, in a sense, surprising. We had thought they were just taking a cut of about 10 percent. We believed that they were motivated, basically, by religious and political extremism. But it looks like they are actually doing it for the money. Whether it's for themselves, or whether it's to finance Taliban crime cartels or their cause around the world, this is very hard to say. But I think it deserves very close scrutiny.

How much money are we talking about?:
Wholesale in Afghanistan alone was about $3 billion last year. Worldwide retail—what's sold on the streets of Naples or Marseilles or London—was about $52 billion.

For years, the word has been that the "Taliban resurgence" is nothing more than another drug gang ploy to keep anyone from interfering with the manufacture and shipment of heroin (plus some opium and morphine) out of the country. Bribes, the preferred defensive weapon, only go so far. The foreign troops are nearly impossible to bribe, and they train Afghans to resist bribes. For the drug gangs, this is painful, and dangerous. So subsidizing the Taliban, to the tune of $50-100 million a year, is seen as a prudent investment. This money goes a long way, because you can hire lots of $10 a day tribal gunmen with that. Actually, you usually give lump sums to tribal big shots, and tell them they can keep whatever they don't spend, as long as they get a certain number of armed guys out there to support the Taliban agenda (worldwide Islamic domination.)

Meanwhile, senior government officials, and journalists on the drug payroll, have been ordered to say unkind things about the foreigners, and play down the drug business. But now the U.S. has blown that cover, and the drug gangs are in the cross hairs.

This is very bad news for the drug gangs. They know, from what happened to the heroin business in Pakistan two decades ago, that a determined government can chase the heroin trade out of the country. In the last half century, that's been done in Burma and Pakistan, and the U.S., and many Afghans, want Afghanistan to be the next name on that list. The Afghan drug lords, who never imagined they'd become so rich from drugs, know that it will all disappear if they can no longer grow the poppies, extract the opium from them, and then turn that into heroin. Moreover, in most of Afghanistan, the drug gangs cannot operate. Opium and heroin are seen as addictive poisons throughout the country, which is why nearly all the heroin is produced in the south, and most of that in one province; Helmand. That's where the drug gangs, and the Taliban, are strongest. And that's where Afghan and foreign troops are massing for a final battle.

This province is overflowing with heroin, cash, guns and Taliban gunmen. Not only are the foreign troops now going after the drugs, but have compiled a list of the fifty most powerful drug lords. Men on this list are to be arrested, or killed, as soon as possible. This is the type of attack that drove the heroin trade out of Burma and Pakistan.