The United States spent more than $8bn over 15 years on efforts to deprive the Taliban of their profits from Afghanistan’s opium and heroin trade, from poppy eradication to air attacks and raids on suspected labs.
That strategy failed.
As the US wraps up its longest war, Afghanistan remains the world’s biggest illicit opiate supplier & looks certain to remain so as the Taliban takes power in Kabul, said current & former US & UN officials & experts.
Widespread destruction during the war, millions uprooted from their homes, foreign aid cuts & losses of local spending by departed US-led foreign troops are fueling an economic & humanitarian crisis that is likely to leave many destitute Afghans dependent on the narcotics trade for survival.
That dependence threatens to bring more instability as the Taliban, other armed groups, ethnic militia leaders & corrupt public officials vie for drug profits & power.
“The Taliban have counted on the Afghan opium trade as one of their main sources of income,” Cesar Gudes, the head of the Kabul office of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), told Reuters. “More production brings drugs with a cheaper & more attractive price & therefore a wider accessibility.”
Despite the threats posed by Afghanistan’s illicit drug business, experts noted, the US and other nations rarely mention in public the need to address the trade – estimated by the UNODC at more than 80 percent of global opium and heroin supplies.
“We’ve stood by on the sidelines & unfortunately, allowed the Taliban to become probably the largest funded non-designated terrorist organization on the globe,” said a US official with knowledge of Afghanistan’s drug trade.
“The US & international partners have continued to pull out and not addressed poppy cultivation,” the official said. “What you’re going to find is that it has exploded.”
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Source: AlJazeera
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