Convenience Big Store: The heroin trade keeps the Taliban strong

8 September, 2021

In the headlines

Boris Johnson's new social care policy means "the tax burden will be the highest in history", says the Daily Mail. The government has imposed £36bn of tax rises over the past six months, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank. It sounds "the death knell for Conservatism", says Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph. Home Secretary Priti Patel will today square off with her French counterpart, Gérald Darmanin. She has threatened to withhold a promised £54m for preventing migration unless the French stop more people crossing the Channel. Scientists have found the secret of a scum-free cuppa, says the Times – avoid hard water from the tap and go for filtered instead.

Comment of the day

A poppy farm in Afghanistan. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The heroin trade keeps the Taliban strong

Jihadism will continue to thrive as long as drug trafficking – "the blood that feeds it" – continues to thrive, says Caroline Fourest in the French magazine Marianne. It's all about money. About 90% of the world's heroin "and a significant part of its hashish" come from the Afghan steppes. Afghanistan has no access to the sea, so the goods are smuggled out via the coast of Pakistan, in the process lining the pockets of the generals who run the ISI, Pakistan's secret service. From there the heroin flows mainly to a small, well-trained and heavily armed network of jihadist insurgents in Mozambique, before being distributed to a host of other terrorist networks.

Hamas, which welcomed the Taliban's victory, is one of the beneficiaries. Few Afghans share the views of Hamas, or Isis, or indeed the Taliban, but many make a living from poppy farming. And despite the American presence over the past 20 years, no one has succeeded in convincing poppy farmers to grow potatoes instead. (Poppies bring in 20 times the revenue.) In some areas the farmers pretended to destroy a few hectares, but this simply pushed up prices and the traffic continued, all the while "allowing the Taliban's war chest to grow". To stop the Taliban, we need to cut off its finances. That means destroying drug trafficking at its source – hard to do, since the source is Afghanistan itself.

Hiking taxes won't save the NHS

Yesterday's "sensational blank-cheque gamble" to bail out the NHS will spell doom for Boris Johnson, says Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun. Right now the public worships the "cash-guzzling NHS", and at its best it's world-class. But the cash is certain to be soaked up by its "sponge-like" bureaucracy and extra money for doctors to do less. Meanwhile, the poorest will pay the most to help the richest. Hiking national insurance will hammer white van man and red-wall voters just as they are being ordered to pay more to go green.

Boris's key election promise was to avoid tax rises. Now his hike will drain the economy of £12bn a year, on top of the £25bn announced in "grim-faced" Chancellor Rishi Sunak's earlier budget. Respected economist Paul Johnson says this year's permanent tax increase of 1.5% of national income is the "highest in peacetime". The least you can say, I suppose, is that the PM is trying after decades of Tory and Labour governments "ducking and diving". But he's learnt nothing from Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who tried the same dodge 20 years ago with their disastrous 1p health tax. There is no known plan for an efficiency drive. "And, Boris, it won't be the NHS that gets the blame. It will be you."

Sport

Photographed by Scott Trindle, British Vogue, October 2021

When Emma Raducanu's classmates saw her playing at Wimbledon, they were gobsmacked. To them I was just the "quiet one who didn't really raise her hand", she tells British Vogue. Quiet or not, she's "the most exciting prospect in tennis", says Matthew Syed in The Times. "Men's or women's." The 18-year-old from southeast London retired during her fourth-round match at Wimbledon, but has bounced back at the US Open, where she plays in the quarter-finals this afternoon. "I often fear writing glowingly about British talent, conscious of the pressure this can heap on young shoulders, but on this occasion it is difficult to hold back."

Eating in

TV chef Tom Kerridge's Buckinghamshire pub, the Hand & Flowers in Marlow, styles itself as an "unpretentious" watering hole where "everyone's welcome". But The Sun says its £87 sirloin steak and £26.50 crème brûlée have "left diners sizzling". "And people complain about wine list mark-ups," tweeted journalist Guy Woodward. In fairness, it's Britain's only two Michelin-star pub.

Snapshot

Noted

Countries are not the villains when it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions – the real culprits are meat and milk producers. According to the Meat Atlas report, 20 livestock companies emit more greenhouse gases than Britain, France or Germany, churning out the equivalent of 932 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. The world's largest meat processor, Brazilian multinational JBS, is responsible for more than a quarter of that.

Snapshot answer

It's a 100ft tunnel used by six Palestinian militants to escape from a high-security prison in Israel. While a guard snoozed, they escaped through the tunnel via a toilet and scurried away at 1.30am on Monday. Reports suggest that part of the tunnel was dug with a rusty spoon.