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January 17, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Independent: The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops. Full news...
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January 3, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Farida’s son inherited her drug addiction in the womb, and drank her opium-laced breast milk. And when he cried and fussed, she calmed him with specks of opium diluted in tea. This is the hidden face of addiction in Afghanistan — parents spreading drug use in the confines of their homes. All four of Farida’s children got high from her husband’s secondhand heroin smoke and from the opium she fed them. Full news...
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January 2, 2008 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Afghanistan's opium production was likely to boom in 2008, the top NATO commander said Wednesday, and predicted continued Taliban-led violence, which he linked to the illicit drug trade. Full news...
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November 24, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Times: "The British public would be up in arms if they knew that the district appointments in the south for which British soldiers are dying are there just to protect drug routes," said one analyst. Western and Afghan officials are also alarmed at how narco-kleptocracy has extended its grip around President Karzai, a figure regarded by some as increasingly isolated by a cadre of corrupt officials. Full news...
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November 22, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Helmand's farmers are chopping down their pomegranate trees for the more lucrative opium plants, while blaming the government for failing to help them. The beautiful red flowers of the pomegranate tree used to cover Helmand, a province which was famous for the luscious red fruit. But these days a different sort of flower blooms, as more and more of Helmand's sandy soil is given over to the opium poppy. Full news...
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November 16, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC): In its final Afghan Opium Survey for 2007 issued today, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows that opium is now equivalent to more than half (53%) of the country's licit GDP. Speaking at a conference in Brussels on the future of Afghanistan, hosted by Princeton University, the Executive Director of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa, announced that the total export value of opiates produced in and trafficked from Afghanistan in 2007 is about $4 billion, a 29 per cent increase over 2006. Full news...
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November 4, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: Amid the multiplying frustrations of the fight against narcotics in Afghanistan, the northern province of Balkh has been hailed as a rare and glowing success. Two years ago the province, which abuts Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, was covered with opium poppies — about 27,000 acres of them, nearly enough to blanket Manhattan twice. This year, after an intense anti-poppy campaign led by the governor, Balkh's farmers abandoned the crop. The province was declared poppy free, with 12 others, and the provincial government was promised a reward of millions of dollars in development aid. Full news...
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September 27, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Pajhwok Afghan News: The burgeoning drug commerce would be hard to rein in if high-ranking government officials involved in narcotics smuggling were not prosecuted, a senior official warned on Thursday. First Vice-President Ahmad Zia Masood, addressing a ceremony that marked the opening of a Counter-Narcotics Police complex, said: We should admit that some top-ranking government officials are unfortunately linked to the smuggling of drugs. Full news...
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September 19, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Council on Foreign Relations: This yearly document reported that opium production in Afghanistan increased 17% in 2007. The executive summary said that "in 2007, Afghanistan cultivated 193,000 hectares of opium poppies, an increase of 17% over last year. The amount of Afghan land used for opium is now larger than the corresponding total for coca cultivation in Latin America (Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined) Full news...
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August 28, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Fighting sleaze is no easy task in a country like Afghanistan, as anti-corruption tsar Izzatullah Wasifi can testify. The economy is awash with opium money, and bribery and backhanders are rife, as confirmed by yesterday's alarming UN report. Full news...
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August 27, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Globe and Mail: The Afghan government and its international backers must do much more to curb the "disastrous" record drug crop, which is like a cancer threatening the survival of the country, the United Nations' drugs control chief said. Full news...
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August 22, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Pajhwok Afghan News: In last four years, more than one hundred thousand drug smugglers were identified in the country but only four of them were booked and arrested as drug producers and traffickers. Full news...
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August 4, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Associated Press: Afghanistan will produce another record poppy harvest this year that cements its status as the world's near-sole supplier of the heroin source, yet a furious debate over how to reverse the trend is stalling proposals to cut the crop, U.S. officials say. Full news...
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July 22, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Mail on Sunday: This week the 64th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, Corporal Mike Gilyeat, was buried. All the right things were said about this brave soldier, just as, on current trends, they will be said about one or more of his colleagues who follow him next week. Full news...
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July 17, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Jerusalem Post: Afghanistan's illicit heroin-producing poppy crop set another record this growing season, besting even last year's haul despite stepped-up efforts to combat the trade, the top US official in Afghanistan said Tuesday. Full news...
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July 2, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Fatama's husband left home one night to smuggle drugs from their mud-thatch border village into Iran. The next morning, her brother-in-law gave her the news: Her husband had been killed. Fatama joined hundreds of other bereaved women in Bunyat, known locally as a "widows village" because so many of its men have died during Afghanistan's long wars, or because of a more recent plague _ the highly profitable but dangerous business of opium and heroin smuggling. Full news...
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June 25, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Sophisticated laboratories inside Afghanistan are now converting 90 percent of the country's opium into heroin and morphine before smuggling it around the world, the United Nations said Monday. Afghanistan, the world's biggest producer of opium, had until two years ago exported the illicit drug almost exclusively in its raw form, said the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Full news...
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June 18, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: Iraq now ranks as the second most unstable country in the world, ahead of war-ravaged or poverty-stricken countries such as Somalia, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Congo, Afghanistan, Haiti and North Korea, according to the 2007 Failed State index issued today by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace. Full news...
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June 12, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
SPIEGEL ONLINE: More and more people in Afghanistan are using opium as a painkiller due to a severe lack of medical supplies in the country. Some mothers are even giving it to their children, much to the concern of the UN. Full news...
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May 30, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
World Socialist Web Site: The US-backed political elite in Kabul have recently made a series of judicial rulings with grave implications for democratic rights that has received little comment in the international media. Full news...
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May 29, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN News: Sadaf started consuming opium seven years ago after she could not find any medicine to overcome a headache that had bothered her for weeks. "When I first smoked opium I felt dizzy for a while, but did not have a headache - so I continued," the mother of four told IRIN in the Yamgan District of Afghanistan's northeastern Badakshan province. Full news...
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May 9, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Taliban insurgents and armed Afghan groups are processing opium in makeshift laboratories to maximise drug profits and better fund the fight against Western forces, a top US drug official said on Monday. Full news...
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May 3, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Columbus Dispatch: "Respected people of Helmand," the radio message began, "The soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan National Army do not destroy poppy fields. They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppy. ISAF and the ANA do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods." It was such a sensible message that it almost had to be a mistake and, of course, it was. Full news...
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April 29, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Global Research: The occupation forces in Afghanistan are supporting the drug trade, which brings between 120 and 194 billion dollars of revenues to organized crime, intelligence agencies and Western financial institutions. Full news...
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March 8, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: When the deal went down in Las Vegas, the seller was introduced only as "Mr. E." In a room at Caesars Palace hotel, Mr. E exchanged a pound-and-a-half bag of heroin for $65,000 cash — unaware that the buyer was an undercover detective. The sting landed him in Nevada state prison for nearly four years. Full news...
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February 12, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR): Helmand's status as the opium capital of the world seems secure for the present. Sources inside the provincial government say this year's opium poppy harvest could dwarf even the record levels of 2006. And a team of eradicators sent from Kabul to destroy the crop is meeting with armed resistance even before they begin work, say local residents. Full news...
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January 23, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN News: On 4 November 2006, Nasima, 25, a member of a local women’s council, grabbed the AK-47 from the policeman guarding the council meeting in the Grishk district of southern Helmand province and killed herself. Full news...
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January 12, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Heroin smuggling through Central Asia is likely to jump this year after a record opium harvest in Afghanistan, the head of Tajikistan's drug control agency and United Nations officials said on Friday. Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the world's opiates and about one fifth of the illegal drugs are smuggled to Europe, Russia and the United States via the so-called "northern route" through Central Asia. Full news...
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January 10, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Mehr News Agency: Prosecutor General Qorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi said here on Wednesday that 60 percent of the illicit drugs produced in Afghanistan are transited through Iran. Full news...
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January 10, 2007 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Herald (UK): The Taliban, are not the only ones terrorising Gereshk. So are the police. "They are thieves," said Sgt Din through a translator, pointing to the town. "They stop the vehicles at checkpoints and take money. One day we tried to stop them. They cocked their weapons. So did we. The ANA commander told us not to get involved." Full news...
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