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it is interesting that the bush administration gave the taliban a 45 million dollar grant as a reward for having done so much to eradicated opium production in afghanistan in 2001. i guess that must have been before the administration no longer liked the taliban.
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All Presidents have been neutral to the Taliban until they refused to hand over Bin Laden. The Taliban was fairly wary of Bin Laden for the most part actually, even offering him over to Saudi Arabia at first. It wasn't until they refused to hand him over did the Taliban become an Enemy to the US. They did not form to invade/overthrow other governments accross the world like Al Qaeda does, and were not seen as a threat until their harboring of him. If they handed him over they would be seen as radical but accomodating.
Though as I said before, this is a non-issue for me. They grow what will provide income. If we devote troops to stopping the trade we will only piss off the people we seek to win over. It's the people who seek out the heroine that are the problem imo, and the money does not flow explicitly to the Taliban. The same warlords who are our allies get money, which are in turn used to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda.