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January 27, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CounterPunch: Drug addicts are pathetic but sometimes happy people. They are pitiable in their hopeless enslavement to something that dominates and will probably kill them, but seem content in a warped sort of way because they can be taken out of their bleak and dismal lives into who knows what warm and cozy cocoons of whirligig private ecstasy by use of narcotics that will ravage their minds and bodies. Full news...
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January 17, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Nation: Opium trade is a major component of Afghan economy that contributes to funding insurgency and escalating corruption in the country, while Afghan opium trade may have exceeded 2.4 billion USD, equivalent to 15 per cent of Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the UN and an Afghan body said on Monday. Full news...
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January 12, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Production of opium and the illicit crop’s value soared in Afghanistan last year, the United Nations said in a report released Thursday. According to the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime, farmer income derived from Afghanistan’s opium crop in 2011 was 1.4 billion USD (1.09 billion euros), representing nine percent of GDP. Full news...
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December 30, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Farmers in Afghanistan’s Helmand province say they are determined to grow as much opium poppy as they can this season, if necessary planting the crop in secluded semi-desert areas if their own fields are being watched by the authorities. Some blame official efforts to encourage them to switch to other crops, which they say have failed to lift them out of poverty. Full news...
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October 11, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Opium production in Afghanistan, which fuels the Taliban insurgency, is set to rise by nearly two-thirds as prices soar after last year’s harvest was blighted by disease, the United Nations said Tuesday. Ten years after the 2001 US-led invasion to drive the Taliban from power, Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world’s illegal opium, funding much of the militia’s insurgency despite an expensive Western eradication programme. Full news...
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September 16, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PTI: US President Barack Obama has identified 22 countries, including India, Pakistan and Afghanistan as major drug transit or illegal drug producing countries. In a presidential determination, Obama designated Bolivia Myanmar and Venezuela as the three countries that have demonstrably failed, during the previous 12 months, to make substantial efforts to adhere to their obligations under international counter narcotic agreements. Full news...
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August 20, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TOLOnews.com: Abdul Zaher Qadir, a lawmaker representing Nangarhar in the House of Representatives, has been accused of drug trafficking, a spokesman for counternarcotics department said on Saturday. The counternarcotics department has called on Abdul Zaher Qadir, who also leads the coalition to support law, to answer some questions. Full news...
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July 20, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: The United States has made headway in building up Afghanistan’s counternarcotics forces, but the war-torn country needs more international help to hold onto those fragile gains, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Top Defense Department, State Department and Drug Enforcement Administration officials told the U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control that Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation was down... Full news...
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June 23, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA: A new U.N. report on illegal drugs says Afghanistan accounts for the majority of the world’s production of opium, while trends show production in Burma to be on the rise. The report also found that between 12 and 21 million people worldwide use opiates, with three-quarters of them using heroin. The U.N.’s drug czar, Yury Fedotov, said at the report’s launch Thursday... Full news...
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June 21, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CNN: Far away from the war, in the remote hills of Badakhshan, there is another battle raging. Trundling into the valleys on dusty roads ripped up by large SUVs, an Afghan task force is heading towards their target: an industry so profitable that many fear it's Afghanistan’s only viable option once the West pulls its troops and money out. Full news...
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June 7, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A family member of two lawmakers has been arrested by counternarcotics police with 52.7 kilograms of opium in northeastern Badakhshan province, an official said on Tuesday. Hedayatullah, the brother of Mariam Kufi and Fauzia Kufi, two female parliamentarians from the northeastern province, was arrested along with three others companions on Monday for allegedly carrying the opium in a car... Full news...
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May 25, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The National: The checkpoints on Kabul’s streets and concrete barricades around its key buildings are a reminder of the war Afghanistan has been in since 2001. But beneath some of its bridges are signs of another war - the battle against HIV. During a recent afternoon, aid workers weaved in and out among the hundreds of drug addicts who gather daily under a bridge in the Pul-e Sought-a neighbourhood of the city to smoke and inject heroin. Full news...
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May 23, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Some policemen are collecting the opium tax from farmers while others are smuggling the drug in Deh Raud district of central Uruzgan province, residents alleged on Monday. Checkpoint commanders charge the tax from opium growers in different areas of the district, a member of Deh Raud District Council told Pajhwok Afghan News on condition of anonymity. Full news...
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April 19, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
FNA: An Afghan lawmaker disclosed on Monday that the foreign forces deployed in Afghanistan are involved in the production and trafficking of illicit drugs in the country, adding that the British troops have even trained a number of experts for opium cultivation. “As long as foreign forces are present in Afghanistan, the cultivation, production and trafficking of drugs will continue in the country,” Nasimeh Niazi told FNA. Full news...
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April 18, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: Driven by soaring opium prices, farmers are expected to plant poppies at a sharply higher rate in parts of Afghanistan that were previously poppy free, the United Nations said Monday in its annual winter survey of poppy cultivation patterns in this country, the world’s leading opium purveyor. Full news...
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April 13, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TOLOnews.com: The number of drug addicts in the western Herat city has risen to over 70,000, provincial officials say. Herat addicts mainly include jobless youths most of whom have returned from Iran. They were addicted to drugs while living in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Governor of Herat said. Full news...
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April 8, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: After several years of attempting to earn a living by growing crops other than poppies, frustrated farmers in Kapisa province are once again producing the raw material for heroin. They say soaring drug prices, along with the government’s failure to fulfill the promises it made as part of its eradication program, left them no choice. Full news...
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February 10, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Through a blue gate, they come for treatment in the early morning, faces wrapped in scarves against the cold. For now it’s a trickle, but their numbers are rising. “I try to keep it secret, especially from my mother,” said a 26-year-old HIV patient at a foreign-run clinic in the Afghan capital, Kabul. “If she knew I had HIV, she would die.” Full news...
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February 8, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: Afghanistan, known as one of the leading producers of drugs and causing health problems around the world, is experiencing the same tragedy today, despite an international effort to stamp the illegal trade out. There are around one million Afghans suffering from drug addiction, of whom 13 percent are children and 20 percent are women, but only five percent of the drug users can get medical treatment... Full news...
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January 24, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CNN: In a far flung corner of northern Afghanistan, Aziza reaches into the dark wooden cupboard, rummages around, and pulls out a small lump of something wrapped in plastic. She unwraps it, breaking off a small chunk as if it were chocolate, and feeds it to four-year-old son, Omaidullah. It’s his breakfast -- a lump of pure opium. Full news...
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January 19, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Demotix: A growing number of Afghans — including children — are escaping the pain of war and poverty by using opium or heroin, for as little as a dollar a day. Experts say that the alarming trend is not being addressed by the Afghan government and its international partners, even though most officials acknowledge that the drug scourge threatens lasting stability in Afghanistan. Full news...
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January 7, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
t r u t h o u t: Efforts by the United Nations (UN), the US military and the Indian government to curb opium production in Afghanistan since 2007 have been largely ineffective, due in large part to the ties between the drug trade and the Taliban. Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, the raw material harvested from poppies to make heroin, as well as alkaloids like codeine and morphine. Full news...
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December 28, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly released well-connected officials convicted of or charged with drug trafficking in Afghanistan, frustrating efforts to combat corruption and providing additional evidence that the United States’ top ally in the country is himself corrupt. Full news...
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December 12, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons. Full news...
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December 12, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Independent: Mariana lies on her bed in the Sanga Amaj clinic in Kabul. She shares a small ward with 12 women enrolled in the clinic's 45-day residential drug rehabilitation programme. At 22, she is five months pregnant with her fourth child. Her one-year-old son lies in a separate room of the clinic. He is also addicted to opium. Full news...
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December 10, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Although production is illegal, the cannabis grown in Balkh has long been prized throughout Afghanistan for its quality. Three years ago, a successful eradication campaign by international and Afghan forces virtually wiped out opium poppy cultivation in the province. Full news...
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September 13, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Daily Mirror: Claims that British soldiers smuggled heroin out of Afghanistan were being investigated by military police last night. Troops are said to have used Army planes to sneak shipments out of the country after buying from dealers. Officials said they were aware of “unsubstantiated” allegations and an inquiry was focusing on British and Canadian personnel at Camp Bastion and Kandahar airports. Full news...
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August 18, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CNN: The 18 women sit cross-legged on metal beds, wearing long, loose dresses and nightgowns, their heads completely covered with shawls. They do not want us to see them. Some of them are holding babies in their laps. They are addicted to heroin and opium, products of Afghanistan's richest and cruelest crop, poppies. Some of their infants are addicted too. Full news...
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August 15, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Heraldscotland: Three weeks after the attack on America’s Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, Tony Blair used his keynote Labour Party Conference speech to lay the groundwork for the forthcoming allied invasion of Afghanistan. Among his targets was the Taliban-controlled Afghan drugs trade which, he said, was not only funding the terrorists’ campaign, it was also the source of 90% of the heroin on British streets. Full news...
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July 26, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: The depths of crime and drug-dealing in Afghan society are highlighted in lurid terms by the US intelligence reports. One log claims to describe how a "notorious criminal" was recruited to spy for Iran. It says he returned to Afghanistan and then became a police chief, gaining power and wealth by drug-dealing. This byzantine story comes from Bala Beluk, a district in the country's south-western province of Farah. Full news...