Thursday, June 14, 2018

"The drug trade in Afghanistan, which helps fund the insurgency and impedes reconstruction efforts, has grown stronger despite billions of dollars spent by the U.S. to fight it"

SandS:
When the U.S. and its allies intervened in Afghanistan in late 2001, poppy cultivation was at a historic low. Last year, cultivation jumped by 63 percent from the year before to a record high of about 1,265 square miles, or more than 20 times the land area of Washington, D.C., according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The country currently produces about 90 percent of the world’s illicit opium.