Readers should be aware - Brihard's post prompted this - that there are other threads that comment / debate the issues, notably in the Afghan context. Starting way back in 2006 'Afghanistan's Drug Problem':http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=1234; 'Cops Show Marines How To Take On Taliban':http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=10895

The author of this CTC report is Gretchen Peters, whose expertise has been challenged before in her book 'Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and Al Qaeda'.

New SWC members may gain from sampling the author's own website: http://gretchenpeters.org/; and a critical review of her book: http://www.registan.net/index.php/20...etchen-peters/ She responds at length to this on her blogsite.