Report from Afghanistan's 'Opium Central'

By Oliver North

"If the long war here in the shadows of the Hindu Kush is going to be won – it will have to be won here in southern Afghanistan first. This forbidding terrain along the Helmand River basin is both the “spiritual heartland” of the Taliban movement and now, the primary source of opium which fuels their insurgency.

Southern Afghanistan is where the Taliban movement began – and nearly ended. Spawned with the help of Pakistan’s government in the 1980s to help defeat the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the faction was initially financed by oil-rich Islamists in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. By 1996 the Taliban, victors in a bloody, half-decade-long civil war had established a brutal, repressive theocracy in Kabul. Taliban leader Mullah Omar became a patron and protector of Usama bin Laden. Al Qaeda was granted near–autonomy to establish bases for indoctrinating and training “Holy Warriors.”"

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