hashish in the raid, "denying $3.4 million of illegal drug trafficking revenue to the anti-government insurgency."

The Taliban's "Red Units," believed to number some 300 fighters, are the rebel army's own special forces, said to be responsible both for especially critical attacks, and for overseeing the dope-for-guns pipeline that fuels the insurgency.

And on Jan. 10, the Counter-Narcotics Police of Afghanistan announced16 arrests in a wave of busts across four provinces—Kabul, Kandahar, Baghlan and Herat. The raids scored 69 kilograms of hashish, as well as smaller quantities of opium, heroin and morphine. Foreign currency totalling $4,500 was also reported to have been seized in the raids.

Hashish exports from Afghanistan are on the increase, and seizures within the country are invariably labelled as "Taliban hashish." The Taliban in their years inpower between 1996 and 2002 were of course ultra-puritanical, and hash-smokers were publicly flogged. Now that they are in insurgency, however, they've turned to the dope trade to subsidize their guerilla war.

Ironically, ISIS, which has also now established a foothold in Afghanistan, has been taking the same propaganda tack as NATO, attempting to tar the Taliban competition with the narco stigma, and portraying themselves as keepers of the flame of an ultra-puritanical Islamic fundamentalism. They can preusmably afford to do so because they've been bankrolled by the black-market oil industry run by the "Islamic State" in northern Iraq and Syria. With ISIS now being driven out of its erstwhile heartland in Iraq and Syria, this may be changing. ISIS may be the next to sully themselves with cannabis.

But,