Book Review – Seeds of Terror (How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda)

I recently read the book Seeds of Terror by Gretchen Peters,a good book to know middle east and terrorism. In this book she mainly talks about how terrorists get funds and how they operate, and about why America and NATO are failing in Afghan. and the book also tells us about the power of poppy, as WSJ writes Poppy trade in Afghan witnessed three stages ( good, bad and ugly).

Good: In 1980 at the time of cold war opium funded the holy warriors who fought against invading Russians which is backed by US. Afghan’s used the poppy, Russian soldiers hooked on drugs and later Russia need to call off the battle. ( at this time it was said that CIA was involved in drug trade and had dealing with drug smugglers)

Bad: In 1992, the holy warriors came to power when the Russians left ­Afghanistan. They grew poppies at a phenomenal rate and used the profits to underwrite their internecine killing, support terrorist training camps and fatten their overseas bank accounts.

Ugly: From 1996 to present is the ugly stage with the Taliban and Qaeda being funded by the Drugs(that is what she says).

She stresses on the point that war on terror can only be won if the high level drug traders are bought to justice and the poppy farmers are shown the alternatives. The book also gives info about how ISI, pakistan and saudi are involved in the drug trade and the economics of it and how the black money is circulated and where most of it ends up.

Over all I get to know  many things about Terrorisms,American Tactics, Policy, poor situation of Pak in this issue,plight of afgan farmers, pak stock exchange, and many more thing .

Finally I would like to tell you about the author. First of all I was awestruck when I saw her Picture and wondered how such a beautiful women has dared to go to  Afghanistan to do research on terrorism . She is really great. I admire her.  She went to afghan in her twenties,  did interviews with military officers, local farmers, and even went to the houses of some of the top terrorists.

Thanks  Harish Kumar Tungaturthi for sharing this book with me  :)