Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control has been studying the evolving counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan and has found that the Taliban has morphed into a hybrid--it is one part terrorist organization, one part global drug trafficking cartel. The Taliban's terrorist operations are increasingly fueled by its substantial narcotics profits, with as much as $169 million coming from a single heroin trafficker in a 10-month period. In Afghanistan, the convergence of terrorism and international drug trafficking is strikingly similar to what we have witnessed in Colombia. There, profits from the cocaine trade has kept the Marxist terrorist group known as the FARC going for the past 46 years. These hybrid organizations are the face of 21st century organized crime. In just one counternarcotics operation in October 2009, a major laboratory in Kandahar province in Afghanistan was raided. Sixteen Taliban were killed. Roughly 1.8 metric tons of opium and heroin were seized at the lab-- along with improvised explosive devices, IEDs, IED bomb-making materials, and Taliban training manuals. The Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA, took down 25 heroin processing labs in Afghanistan in fiscal year 2009. All of them had ties to the Taliban. In December 2009, before the House Armed Services Committee Karl W. Eikenberry, U.S.…”