Drugs, Thugs, and Cash

Over 90% of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan, and 60% of Afghanistan's GDP comes from poppy trade. With nearly 70,000 American troops set to be in Afghanistan by the summer, most in the poppy-infested south and east of the country, the linkages between drugs and militant financing are more in the spotlight than ever. Emmy-nominated former Associated Press and ABC News reporter Gretchen Peters spent five years traveling to the deepest reaches of the treacherous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan to research her "stunning" new book, Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Join us as Peters and Douglas Farah, author of a critically acclaimed book on the international weapons trade, Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible, discuss the region's narcotics trade, precariously placed at ground zero in the "war on terror", and the relationship between Afghan drugs, thugs, and money.

Copies of Seeds of Terror will be available for purchase.
See map: Google Maps

Participants

featured speakers
Gretchen Peters
Author, Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Banking the Taliban and al Qaeda

Douglas Farah
Author, Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible

moderator
Patrick Doherty
Co-Director, Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative
Deputy Director, American Strategy Program
New America Foundation