IN EARLY November 2001, as the war in Afghanistan was getting under way, the United Nations held a press conference in Islamabad to announce the latest scores in the global drug eradication effort. Those journalists who bothered to attend were surprised to learn that the previous year the Taliban had all but eradicated the opium poppy from the areas it controlled.
At the time, it was the crimes of the Taliban regime from its treatment of women and its love for Osama bin Laden to its promotion of heroin addiction among western youth that were of interest.