Bashir Noorzai

FP: A drug kingpin whose heroin empire helped fund the Taliban’s long war in Afghanistan—and who was released early from a U.S. prison in a trade for an American hostage—has now gone into business with China. Bashir Noorzai, a close friend of the extremists’ supreme leader, has set up murky joint-venture deals with Chinese firms in Afghanistan that have won at least two minerals and petrochemical contracts, which mining and security sources said are little more than rentier operations raking in cash but doing nothing to develop the impoverished country.  Click here to read more (external link).