The al-Qaida terror network and Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime are managing to find new sources of funding despite global economic sanctions, the head of a U.N. committee overseeing those sanctions said Tuesday. Increasingly, the Taliban have turned to drug revenues to pay for their insurgency against Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government, said chairman Heraldo Munoz, who is the Chilean ambassador to the United Nations. He was in Afghanistan to meet with President Hamid Karzai and other leading Afghan officials to discuss ways to improve intelligence gathering on individuals and companies linked to both the Taliban and al-Qaida. Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of poppy — the raw material used to make heroin. Before it fell, the Taliban enforced a ban on poppy cultivation, but business is booming in the power vacuum that has followed. Many feel local warlords loyal to the government are also profiting from the trade. Full Story
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