Book Review: Seeds of Terror

In Afghanistan, farmers grow poppy for opium, which is later processed into heroin and, ultimately, sold as heroin on the black market. How, when the Quran defines drugs as “the filth of Satan’s handiwork,” does the Islamic populace in Afghanistan justify growing this illicit crop? For one thing, the sale, but not consumption, of opium is acceptable to the locals because it is supposedly consumed by the West–by infidels–and thus furthers the war on them, outlines Gretchen Peters in her book Seeds of Terror: How Drugs, Thugs, and Crime Are Reshaping the Afghan War. Peters has worked for the Associated Press and ABC News.

This premise is absolutely false, she argues, and “Anyone who thinks infidels are the main consumers of Afghan dope is fooling himself,” she writes. “Addicts in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone accounted for 55 percent of the 1,100 metric tons of opium consumed world-wide in 2008.”

“Users in Central Asia, Iran, and Pakistan smoked, snorted or injected another 17 percent of the heroic produced that year.” European nations and Russia also consume a large portion of this heroin, she writes.

Peters’ book attempts to establish a link between the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the drug trade. “To this day, some senior U.S. officials continue to argue that al Qaeda is not systematically involved in drug smuggling, although many acknowledge that low-rank operatives get involved now and then to earn money,” she asserts. Peters attempts to prove differently, citing a two maritime events and some connections between al Qaeda linked insurgents and the drug trade: “However, there is widespread evidence Uzbek insurgents linked to al Qaeda are heavily tied to drug smuggling and control as much as 70 percent of the multibillion-dollar heroin and opium trade through Central Asia,” writes Peters. “Other incidents prove low-level Arab al Qaeda operatives have engaged in trafficking, including two maritime seizures in 2003.”

With no smoking gun to point to, Peters’ book becomes less about terror so much as Afghanistan thuggery and corruption. Thus, the title seems to be a bit of a misnomer. However, the book is a useful primer on Afghanistan politics and graft.

Readers learn that Afghani farmers are stuck in a cycle of poverty where they sell their poppy crops before the harvest. Thus, once the harvest comes, they already owe money to the drug trade. In addition, farmers face violence from the Taliban should they turn to other crops. Peters is against the eradication of poppy crops and counsels the U.S. government to spearhead efforts to combat the opium trade by focusing on traffickers instead of farmers. This is because, with large stores of opium hidden underground, drug traffickers stand to make a mint whenever the supply of opium is lowered. It seems, in Peters’ telling, that drug money as the root of all evil has corrupted every level of the Afghani government up through President Hamid Karzai and his half-brother Ahmed Wali.

While well-sourced in general, the book relies in large part on unnamed sources in the U.S. government who, in citing their frustrations with U.S. policy in Afghanistan, fail to identify themselves and stand by their words. A good read, but not an essential one.

On the topic of Islamic terror a recommended read is:

Twilight in America: The Untold Story of Islamic Terrorist Training Camps Inside America by Martin Mawyer & Patti Perucci.

The book must be pretty accurate Muslims of America aka Jumaat ul-Fuqra are suing the authors for defamation and to have sales of the book enjoined.

Link to info on the book and MOA’s lawsuit against the authors: http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/02/did-christian-action-network-defame-the-muslims-of-america/

My son served in Afghanistan with the Marines. I asked him what he did, and their assignment was to eradicate poppy fields by fire. He was told that 95percent of terrorist funding came from opium sales. I asked what was wrong with “round up” heribicide from the air.

I was told that we can’t do that because there are a lot of families that just plant crops to feed their families and we can’t harm them.

After seeing how he came back, and knowing that some of his friends came home in body bags, I don’t care about those families.

A couple other books that may be of interest are:

“Allah is Dead. Why Islam is not a Religion” by Rebecca Bynum

Bynum says it is much closer to ideologies such as material determinism, nihilism and even social Darwinism than it is to either Christianity or Judaism. In fact there are many similarities between Islam and Nazism and Marxism. All these three ideologies are totalitarian and believe ends justify the means.

And

“The Truth about Mohammed. Founder of the Wrold’s Most Intolerant Religion.” and “Did Mohammed Exist? An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins” by Robert Spencer

Did Mohammed Exist? reveals:

How the earliest biographical material about Muhammad dates from at least 125 years after his reported death

How six decades passed before the Arabian conquerors—or the people they conquered—even mentioned Muhammad, the Qur’an, or Islam

The startling evidence that the Qur’an was constructed from existing materials—including pre-Islamic Christian texts

How even Muslim scholars acknowledge that countless reports of Muhammad’s deeds were fabricated

Why a famous mosque inscription may refer not to Muhammad but, astonishingly, to Jesus

How the oldest records referring to a man named Muhammad bear little resemblance to the now-standard Islamic account of the life of the prophet

The many indications that Arabian leaders fashioned Islam for political reasons

Far from an anti-Islamic polemic, Did Muhammad Exist? is a sober but unflinching look at the origins of one of the world’s major religions. While Judaism and Christianity have been subjected to searching historical criticism for more than two centuries, Islam has never received the same treatment on any significant scale.

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