Blog Topic #7

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LE20Df01.html

For this blog I chose to do mine on the opium wars in Afghanistan. I think that it is obvious that the Taliban is one of the main causes of this high amount of opium production. In this article it talks about their influence on the opium all over the world. It says that they produce 90% of the worlds illicit opium, which the farmers have to grow themselves, but the Taliban will come around and collect taxes from them on the opium. The farmers that grow the opium are not Taliban themselves, they are just men that are trying to get money so they can put food on the table and make it through the winter.

The prices of opium are starting to rise because of the disease that has happened to the crop causing the poppies to wilt and therefore are pretty much useless. So with the supply going down and the price going up this is just going to bring in more money for the Taliban. Even though the supply is down, they have stockpiles of opium that they can sell and therefore when people wonder how the Taliban has so much money, well that is why.