U.S. GIFTS TO THE TALIBAN

To the Editor:

What do the United States government and the Taliban have in common?
Unbridled fanaticism.

When the U.S. government gave $43 million dollars to the Taliban, in
exchange for the Taliban declaring opium poppy farms to be "against the
will of God," the United States sought to fuel its own fanatical obsession,
the war on drugs.

Despite U.S. knowledge that the Taliban was an oppressive "rogue regime" of
religious fundamentalists with documented abuses of human rights, the U.S.
government ignored the Taliban's systematized cruelties in order to push
its own domestic and dogmatic anti-drug agenda.

In the wake of the 9.11 calamities, it is grotesquely ironic that "we" gave
millions in anti-drug aid to Afghanistan's Taliban, the regime that, in
addition to committing countless crimes against Afghan people, still
harbors bin Laden and his network of suspected terrorists. By militarizing
the Taliban to punish Afghan farmers growing opium poppies -- farmers
desperate for a cash crop to feed their families in a country of decimated
agricultural infrastructure -- the U.S. government may have indirectly
subsidized terrorism. Just one more example of the war on drugs causing
more harm than good.

Wrye Sententia, Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, Davis, Calif.