Reply #9: Taliban deny link with accused Afghan drug kingpin [View All]

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http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5721796&cKey=1114506319000

<snip a Taliban spokesman denied that Noorzai had ever helped them and said the accusation against him was a smokescreen to obscure the involvement of others in drugs, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency said on Tuesday.

"There is no question of giving money or weapons to the Taliban by Haji Bashir," the Taliban's political spokesman, Abdul Hayee Motmaeen, told the news agency.

"The government of the Taliban struggled a lot against narcotics and had banned poppy cultivation," Motmaeen said, referring to a successful anti-drug drive the Islamic militia launched in the last year of its rule.

Drug production has flourished since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001 and the United Nations says drugs and the trafficking gangs are one of the country's most serious problems as it struggles to restore stability.