On Fri, 16 May 2003, Sandy Harris wrote:
In Af, there was hashish more-or-less everywhere, and exceedingly high quality. Everyone from customs officials and military officers to street urchins and respectable merchants offerred it to us. I don't think that, in several weeks in the country, we ever spent more than a half hour in public without someone trying to sell us hash. Friends visited a warehouse with hundreds of kilos in it.
We were not offerred opium.
This is what I've read from people on the ground there now. Basicly, opium is a crop for sale, but hash is the drug of choice.
I'd say that if opium is indeed a major crop in Af now, then the situation was created by some combination of US pressure on other sources, the Islamic gov't in Iran suppressing it there, various groups -- including Bin Laden's lads -- needing money to fight the Russians, Taliban (probably with the help of the CIA and Pakistani Intelligence, who created them) needing money, ...
It grows well there on top of it all, and gets a high value. All the rest is opportunism. I guess it'd be nice if a lot of that "nice quality hash" made it back to the US. But I suspect our troops will smoke it all first! Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike