Tolo News: Afghanistan is by a long way still the world’s largest opium producer, accounting for some 70 percent (3,300 tons) of global opium production, according to the United Nations World Drug Report of 2016. Myanmar is the second largest producer of the drug at 14 per cent (650 tons) of global production. Click here to read
Xinhua: “I hate poppies and the drug trade but poverty and my dire need for money have forced me into this lucrative business and I can earn a relatively good income and support my family from farming the plant,” a farmer in the southern Kandahar province, Sadiq Agha, 55, told Xinhua recently. Click here to read
Tolo News: Officials of the Helmand provincial council and a senator in the Meshrano Jirga (Upper House of Parliament) said Sunday that the fighting in Helmand has temporarily decreased because Taliban fighters are too busy producing and smuggling drugs in the province. The officials said it was now the time for stepped-up action by security forces against
Pepe Escobar (via Counter Punch): The Pentagon said Mansour was on Obama’s kill list because he had become “an obstacle to peace and reconciliation.” There’s way more to it, of course. Bets can be made that Mansour’s kill will not reduce Afghanistan’s opium production – which has been steadily on the rise for years now. Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada,
Pravda: The CIA has a long history of being involved in global drug trade in all parts of the world under the control of the US or where it has considerable influence. While a few cases have been investigated and exposed by journalists, the issue continues to remain in the shadows. The CIA’s history began in the
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty May 25, 2016 Afghan authorities claimed security forces killed a senior Taliban commander they identified as the “shadow governor” of the southern province of Helmand. The Taliban denied the report, which came days after Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansur was killed by a U.S. airstrike in southwestern Pakistan. Omar Zwak, a
KABUL, May 4 (Xinhua) — Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday termed illicit drug as a national problem and called upon Afghans to stand along with the government in fighting the menace. “Like poverty, the problem of drug in society is a national problem and a serious challenge,” Ghani said while inaugurating a drug
VOA News Zia-U-Rahman Hasrat, Noor Zahid May 2, 2016 WASHINGTON AND NANGARHAR, AFGHANISTAN—The United States and the West have long targeted Afghan opium and heroin production. Now the industry has a new enemy: Islamic State (IS). Afghan opium farmers in areas under IS control told VOA’s Afghan service that IS has started eradicating poppy crops in
April 21, 2016 TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Ministers from Iran and Afghanistan agreed on Thursday to launch a joint pilot scheme on alternative means of livelihood across a border region as part of UN-sponsored efforts to curb narcotics production. The agreement was reached in a meeting between Iran’s Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli and Afghan Minister
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, April 21 (Xinhua) — “Growing poppies and selling opium is the only way to earn a living and support my family,” Assadullah, 65, a farmer, told Xinhua on his poppy plantation in a southern province of the city recently. Working on his poppy field on the outskirts of Kandahar’s provincial capital, about 450