8am: In a recent incident, Taliban fighters carried out a violent attack in Ghor Province, brutally assaulting several residents and setting their motorcycles ablaze, as reported by local sources. One local resident, who wished to remain anonymous, revealed that the Taliban fighters had been personally gathering yam plants from the mountains and profiting from their
Ayaz Gul VOA News July 31, 2023 ISLAMABAD — The United States said Monday that it had urged Afghanistan’s Taliban in the latest round of bilateral talks to reverse policies responsible for the deteriorating human rights situation in the country, particularly for women, girls and vulnerable communities, while praising economic and counternarcotics gains the country has
The Diplomat: The humongous trade is run by regional and multinational cartels with complex and elaborate illicit networks across the region. Politicians, security force personnel, and even the Taliban have been part of this symbiotic nexus, profiteering enormous amounts of money. Amid the anti-poppy measures of the Taliban, a record amount of Afghan drugs moved
WP: One year on, it’s not clear whether the Taliban will soon make a significant dent on a crop that the United Nations estimated accounts for one-tenth of the entire Afghan economy. The country’s poppy farmers supply the raw ingredients that, after being boiled into bricks, refined and exported to Europe via Iran and Pakistan,
NIKKEI: The increasing number of addicts in Afghanistan shows how opium and heroin have a strong and corrosive impact on families. Husbands get their wives addicted, and mothers often expose their children to opium’s harmful effects. This happens when mothers use opium while pregnant, expose their children to opium smoke, or use opium to calm
Global Initiative: Having long hosted Western Asia’s largest methamphetamine market, Iran for decades has employed an aggressive multi-million-dollar campaign to curb the trade. The discovery, however, of the ephedra plant in neighbouring Afghanistan – a source of ephedrine, a key ingredient for the drug – threatens to undermine Tehran’s efforts. The abundance of cheap meth
Khaama: The US Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Thomas West, tweeted that the recent reports on a significant drop in poppy production in the country are “credible and important.” But since the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan’s economy has collapsed, and the population is now facing a severe humanitarian catastrophe. Experts claim that as a result, one
Khaama: Several related economic activities are involved in Afghanistan drug trafficking. Cartels maintain a symbiotic relationship with the Taliban by giving farmers advances to plant ephedra and opium while providing the financial assistance necessary to keep the jihadist proto-state alive. These cartels use Pakistani sources to facilitate the acquisition of chemicals required to produce drugs.
By RFE/RL’s Tajik Service May 9, 2023 Tajikistan has asked member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to establish an independent agency to combat drug trafficking from Afghanistan. Foreign Affairs Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin says he also told a high-level meeting of officials from the SCO last week in India that it was important to establish
Farmers in southern Afghanistan say they are dismayed at the destruction of their poppy farms by the Taliban government since it assumed control of Afghanistan in 2021. Once a lucrative crop, farmers made a fortune under the former government backed by the West, but the Taliban enforced a strict ban in 2023 to avoid