Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty February 16, 2020 Gunmen have shot dead nine homeless drug users in the Afghan capital, officials said on February 16. The incident took place late on February 15 in a cave on the outskirts of Kabul near the Koh-e Qurugh mountain, police spokesman Faramarz Tamanna told dpa. One addict was found
1TV: In a statement on results of its annual estimate of Afghanistan opium, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said output of opium made from poppy seeds in Afghanistan stood at around 6,700 metric tons last year. That was compared with 5,500 metric tons in 2018. Click here to read more (external
By RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan: A settlement in western Afghanistan has become known as the “village of widows.” Some 50 women in the village of Mir Ali in Herat Province’s Adraskan district have lost their husbands, with many killed or executed after smuggling drugs across the Iranian border. Click here for more (external link).
Tolo News: Figures by the Ministry of Public Health reveal that Afghanistan has more than 2.5 million illicit drug users, and at least 500,000 of them are addicts. An official at the ministry said the capacity of rehabilitation centers countrywide has increased to over 40,000 patients, from 2,000 five years ago. The official said that in
Insider: The US-led war in Afghanistan turned 18 in October, and those two decades of fighting and rebuilding appear to have yielded little progress. The counternarcotics effort there, for example, “has just been a total failure,” John F. Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, in November. Click
AFP via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Afghanistan has a drug problem from the abundant poppies that get made into opium. A group of Afghan women has found a way out of their addiction through a different crop.
Ayaz Gul VOA News October 9, 2019 ISLAMABAD – The United Nations said Wednesday recent U.S. airstrikes on alleged drug-processing facilities in Afghanistan that killed more than 30 civilians, including children, were “not lawful.” The casualties occurred last May in western Farah and adjoining Nimroz provinces where the U.S. bombed more than 60 sites, identifying
The Telegraph (UK): Afghanistan is seeing a boom in methamphetamine drug production, potentially providing a new revenue stream for the Taliban in a country already notorious for opium and heroin. The United Nations said Afghan seizures of the powerful stimulant drug had increased exponentially in the past five years and then “gone off the scale” in 2019. Click
Al Jazeera: Users describe why they are increasingly addicted to so-called tablet k pills, a drug that officials know little about. A group of well-to-do young men in their 20s get out and start discussing a new drug that has, in their words, gained popularity among young Afghans. “Hashish is nothing. Opium is nothing. All anyone
BBC News: Despite the incredible resources the American military were pouring in, Dr Mansfield and his team are now convinced that the US Air Force was using 21st century fighter jets to bomb little more than mud huts. Opium now accounts for around a third of Afghanistan’s GDP, he says. It is by far the country’s biggest