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
AFP: A vast field of towering white poppies sways gently in the breeze, silky petals sometimes tumbling to the ground, a visible marker of the resilience of Afghanistan’s lucrative opium trade. The sight of a seemingly endless expanse of opium-producing flowers is common across rural Afghanistan, but this farm is in the centre of government-controlled Lashkar
Time: The U.S. Sent Its Most Advanced Fighter Jets to Blow Up Cheap Opium Labs. Now It’s Canceling the Program – After hundreds of airstrikes failed to curtail the Taliban’s $200 million-a-year opium trade, the U.S. military quietly ended a yearlong campaign that targeted drug labs and networks laced around the Afghan countryside. The end of
Ayaz Gul VOA News December 12, 2018 ISLAMABAD — Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran have pledged to increase cooperation and information-sharing for effectively combating the trafficking of Afghan opiates. War-shattered Afghanistan remains the world’s largest producer of opium, though the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime noted in its latest survey the opium cultivation decreased by 20 percent in
Ayaz Gul VOA News December 7, 2018 ISLAMABAD — The Taliban has killed at least 14 Afghan soldiers and taken more than 20 others hostage in the western Afghan province of Herat, which borders Iran, officials confirmed Friday. Separately, a counter-Taliban airstrike in central Uruzgan province killed at least seven Afghan security forces. The latest violence
Ayaz Gul VOA News November 19, 2018 ISLAMABAD — A new United Nations survey finds that opium cultivation in Afghanistan has decreased by 20 percent in 2018 compared to the previous year, citing a severe drought and falling prices of dry opium at the national level. The total opium-poppy cultivation area decreased to 263,000 hectares, from
WASHINGTON, June 14 (Sputnik) – More than $8 billion spent by the United States in the past decade to curtail opium production in Afghanistan has been graded a failure, with poppy production at an all-time high and providing income for terrorist groups with help from corrupt Afghan officials, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John
VOA News | April 30,2018: Poppy harvest season is underway in Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opium. Farmers in eastern Nangarhar province say they do not have any other options but to cultivate poppy to make a living. U.S. and Afghan forces continue to target drug-processing labs across Afghanistan in order to target Taliban financial
RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan | April 25, 2018: Afghans heading to take part in the opium harvest tell RFE/RL they have no other way of making a living. Afghanistan is the world’s biggest poppy producer. Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400,
Ozy: Because new tactics are giving farmers an alternative to poppy fields. Abdul Hadi is a farmer in a village in southern Afghanistan. For more than a decade, he has wrestled with the difficult landscape, producing wheat and other sustainability crops despite failing irrigation systems and harsh winters. “Less than half of the farmers could afford to