"notbob" wrote in message ...

Screw the lithium. It's the poppies that keep us there. Under the
Taliban, as cruel and barbaric as they are, they stopped the trade in
poppies, a major source of heroin.

No, they didn't, they shut down shipments for a year to eliminate a backlog
of supply and drive up prices. The Taliban was and still is funded in large
part by the Afghan opium/heroin trade.