U.S. commanders are seeing a lull in the fighting in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, but that’s not a good thing.
It appears the Taliban are too busy harvesting a bumper crop of opium poppies to launch any offensives.
“The poppy crop is really the engine that provides all the money that fuels the Taliban,” said U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, who says Taliban leader Mullah Mansour seems focused on maximizing profits from Afghanistan’s traditional cash crop.
“He does not have really religious credentials, he really doesn’t have military credentials. His background with the Taliban was more the drug smuggling and the drug, the opium production and the taxing of all that,” Cleveland told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday.
“There is a concern that with this very good poppy crop that they had this year, it is going to result in the Taliban being able to turn that into money for their efforts,” Cleveland said, adding it will “take them further down the path of being focused on the narcotic trade and the narcotics industry.”
The U.S. military says it expects an uptick in Taliban attacks as soon as the harvest is over.
