“In his jail cell in Kabul, the Taliban spokesman Abdul Haq Hanif acknowledged the linkage between the Taliban and the drug trade, conceding what pretty much every Afghan and U.S. official in Afghanistan has been saying for years, that the Taliban was, in part, a drug cartel. Hanif explained [in an interview with journalist Peter Bergen in April 2007]: ‘The Taliban said to people to cultivate poppies in your lands and we will protect you.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]
– Peter Bergen, The Longest War, Page 190