Taliban and opium!!!!

THE refurbished argument that the Taliban of
Afghanistan have gone "back" into producing opium
since the Sept. 11 attacks not only lacks logic and
sense, but also reflects a surprising lack of Western
understanding of the mindset of the rulers in power in
Kabul.
If anything, the US approach to the issue is
contradictory and murky. For one thing, many US
officials accuse the Taliban of growing drugs to
finance itself while the UN agency fighting narcotics
around the world has certified that the Taliban not
only ordered a total end of poppy production in the
country in early 2000 but also enforced it to the
letter.
At the same time, the US has no reluctance to deal
with the Taliban's foes, the Northern Alliance, which
the UN agency says survives on drugs produced outside
Taliban-controlled areas.
According to the January 2000 Taliban edict, issued
by none other than its spiritual leader Mullah Omar
Mohammed, growing, dealing, and using drugs is
"un-Islamic," and hence the ban.
The US, which is the hardest hit country by the menace
posed by narcotics, grudgingly admitted a few months
after the edict was issued that the Taliban were
indeed enforcing the ban, but the Northern Alliance
was continuing the trade.
Today, when the US suddenly found the Taliban as its
immediate enemy in its war against terrorism, open
occusations are levelled that the ruling Afghan
militia has resumed opium production and is posing an
additional threat to the international community in
addition to its support for terrorism.
Quite predictably, little is said about the proven
record of the Northern Ailliance in using narcotics as
one of its mainstay means of incomes and about the
newfound partnership the US has forged with the group
or groups that make up the opposition to the Taliban
in the country.
What is missing here is an American understanding that
the Taiban, despite all what the West sees as their
vagaries and support for terrorism, see themselves as
puritan sect based on the noblest of noble principles
and are committed to what they believe in. Of course,
what they see as noble might not be seen so by others.
But that does not have any bearing on the group's
strong belief in what it is doing.
As such, Mullah Omar's ban on opium production was not
just a bolt out of the blue, but a decision taken in
view of Islamic principles, and it is highly unlikely
that he would go back on that ban simply because it
suits him to hit back on the world community and earn
money in the bargain by resuming the drug trade. An
argument to the contrary reflects nothing but the
gaping hole in American understanding of the Taliban
in general.
Indeed, it is of course quite possible that the US and
its strategists have understood the reality but do not
want to acknowledge it because it would be against US
interests to even hint that the Taliban are living by
certain principles, flawed as they might be as they
appear to the West.
That is not to say that the way of life practised by
the Taliban is perfect or impure, conservative,
militant, hardline, moderate or liberal. That is for
religious scholars to decide. But it is important here
to understand the group's has an unflinching way of
thinking and would not deviate from that as a
political strategy.
What the US and the rest of the international
community fail to realise is that the way of life the
Taliban have chosen for themselves — right or wrong,
good or bad, fanatic or moderate — is not a strategy.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the way of
life that the Taliban have adopted is as dear to the
movement as non-violence was the way of life for
Mahatma Gandhi.
Probably, the ongoing crisis might unravel itself if
the US were to understand this crucial truth and act
accordingly. Or is it too late?