Somewhere in Georgia, Rep. Tommy “Caning for Potheads” Benton is calling the Taliban weak for their light treatment of marijuana users…
(“Seeds of Terror” by Gretchen Peters) The Taliban dropped a bruised, shivering wretch at our feet, his legs in shackles. “This is what we do to addicts”, declared Abdul Rashed, head of their anti-drug force in Kandahar. It was Spring of 1997, I had traveled to the southern Afghan city, then the Taliban’s de facto capital, with the Pakistani journalist, Ahmed Rashed. I was writing a story about the opium trade for the AP, Ahmed was researching his book “The Taliban” which would become an overnight best-seller after the 9/11 attacks. We met the counter-narcotics chief in his shoebox sized office. I made a joke about how the 2 men might be related since they shared the same last name, neither man found it funny. Ahmed was meticulously turned out in an Italian sports coat, his namesake picked bits of food from his greasy beard while he explained the Taliban’s unique approach to curing drug addiction.
First he said addicts got beaten until they confess the name of their supplier, after that they were thrown in jail. “Then we dunk them in ice cold water for 2 or 3 hours a day”, Rashed explained. Adding brightly, “it’s a very good cure”, to prove his point he ordered his minions to drag out Bak Mohammad, a local shopkeeper recently caught smoking a joint. “When they put me in that cold water I forgot all about hashish” said Mohammad, slumped on the floor before us.
The irony here, of course, is that the Taliban is almost completely funded by the cultivation of opium and trafficking in heroin worldwide. Afghans don’t really use heroin, so the religious fanatics of the Taliban don’t seem to mind growing it to poison the infidel. But Afghans love their cannabis and hash, so the Taliban plays DEA whenever marijuana is involved.
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