“And soon defeat the Taliban? An opium dream! Why, no-one can! It's all world trade: their export crop is in high demand - it's opium poppies, passed via equivocal Pakistan, who somehow fail to impose a ban on this corruption, which is wider than any doings of Al Quaeda: the most effective tool, the best, for the moral self-destruction of the West.” --- “A poppycocktail from the Taliban” by Michael Shepherd