Turns out that the Taliban isn’t getting all that much of its money from drugs. Why get it from drugs when you can get it from Uncle Sam?
KABUL – It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country.Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban themselves prefer to term it, “spoils of war,” the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.
“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one U.S. Embassy official, speaking privately.
It’s classic East Coast politics. The Taliban are the mob, and they get their cut. A big cut.
Then they use the money, from us, to fight us.
And why shouldn’t they fight us? WE’RE ATTACKING THEM.
What’s lost in most of these discussions is the obvious elephant in the room — the only reason the Taliban is fighting us is because we’re there attacking them.
Why are we there, spending $133 million a day?
I repeat, we are spending throwing away $133 million A DAY, five and a half million bucks AN HOUR fighting the natives who are using our own money to defend themselves.
And the generals admit we are losing there.
Five and a half MILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR fighting a “war” that we are losing.
Only to find out that a lot of our money is going to the same people we’re fighting.
Now, my absurdity meter has redlined quite a few times over the years, but I think this completely smashes it.
Of course what those figures don’t tell you is how much of that $5.5 million bucks an hour is going directly to American corporations. I mean, it’s not going to the soldiers. Right? It’s going to the corporations who supply the machinery, the gasoline and diesel fuel (ESPECIALLY them), the arms makers, the bootmakers, hell, there must be hundreds of big corporations for whom this is a BIG portion of their daily cash flow.
$5.5 million bucks an hour. To fight an opponent that we are also funding.
That’s what America has turned into.
The dog has caught its own tail and is devouring it.
Please cross post this anywhere you’d like. I will only post this here.
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when that kind of money is going up in smoke every day.
When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan, the Mujaheddin made most of their independent income (other than what the US and the Saudis supplied) by shipping drugs to Europe – through the Soviet Union using Soviet rail stock. Or so I am told by an American chappie I ran into in Karachi who said he was selling vacuum cleaners.
The Mafia are pikers compared to the Afghanis. I’ve been in situations where I was afraid I might get hurt, but only with the Afghanis did I feel like a mouse must feel at the tender mercies of a cat.
always financed both sides to serve their goals. This goes back to the Revolutionary War and all wars since. It’s actually not surprising when you look at the “real reason” for wars, i.e., the goals and agenda of the elite.