The New York Times recently revealed yet another reason to get your building materials regionally -- or to at least know where they're coming from. With every shipment of the prized white marble from the Ziarat quarry in Pakistan, the Taliban takes a cut. The outlaw group, the major enemy of the U.S. and coalition forces in Afganistan, has pocketed tens of thousands of dollars from the marble trade. From the article:

The mountain of white marble shines with such brilliance in the sun it looks like snow. For four years, the quarry beneath it lay dormant, its riches captive to tribal squabbles and government ineptitude in this corner of Pakistan's tribal areas. But in April, the Taliban appeared and imposed a firm hand. They settled the feud between the tribes, demanded a fat fee up front and a tax on every truck that ferried the treasure from the quarry. Since then, Mir Zaman, a contractor from the Masaud subtribe, which was picked by the Taliban to run the quarry, has watched contentedly as his trucks roll out of the quarry with colossal boulders bound for refining in nearby towns.

According to the Times, the Ziarat stone is on par with some of the finest marbles in the world. While the paper doesn't claim that the marble has a market in North America, parallels to well-established illegal trade in other prized building materials, such as exotic lumber, would suggest a policy of caveat emptor:

Of all the minerals in the tribal areas, the marble from Ziarat is one of the most highly prized for use in expensive floors and walls in Pakistan, and in limited quantities abroad. A government body, the FATA Development Authority, failed over the last several years to mediate a dispute between the Masaud and Gurbaz subtribes over how the mining rights to the marble should be allocated, according to Pakistani government officials familiar with the quarry who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the effort's failure. A new government mining corporation, Pakistan Stone Development Company, offered last year to invest in modern mining machinery, but even with the lure of added value, the development authority could not sort out the feud. The arguments were fierce because the tribes knew that the Ziarat marble was of particularly fine texture and purity, comparable to Italian Carrara marble, according to an assessment done for the FATA Development Authority. The Taliban came eager for a share of the business. Their reputation for brutality and the weakness of the local government authorities allowed the Taliban to settle the dispute in short order.

Perhaps bamboo flooring, or better yet, domestic stone or hardwoods, aren't just environmental choices for flooring -- they're the support-our-troops choice? Read the rest of the article here. Photo: Akhtar Soomro for The New York Times