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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...
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July 13, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Esmatullah, 24, has been injecting heroin for over two years but he is unaware that sharing needles could infect him with HIV, hepatitis or other highly contagious blood-borne diseases. “I don’t know anything about these diseases and how they’re transferred from one person to another,” he told IRIN; he had recently been deported from Iran where he had become an addict. Full news...
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June 21, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Eight percent of Afghans suffer from drug addiction, a rate twice the global average and a “major” growing problem for the world’s leading narcotic producer, a survey warned Monday. Issued by the Afghan government and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the report found around one million people in the country aged 15 to 64 had drug addictions, often to opium and heroin. Full news...
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June 6, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA: Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Sunday Afghan drug trafficking should be classified as a threat to international peace and security. The Russian Deputy Prime Minster made his remarks at an Asia security conference in Singapore. “Large part of the population of Afghanistan is involved in the cultivation and production of opium and opium products such as heroin,” he said. Full news...
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May 10, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: It is well known that the Taliban, local criminals and international drug cartels profit enormously from the drug trade; that corruption is rife; and that huge amounts of aid money are pouring into Afghanistan. Less clear is the effect of all this on government power and the rule of law on which humanitarian aid organizations depend to carry out their mandate. Full news...
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May 7, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Women’s International Perspective: The revelation that the number of opium-addicted Afghan children has reached new highs is a sad unintended consequence of that war. It dramatically illustrates how adult war games can doom generations of children to a miserable life. A group of researchers hired by the US State Department found staggering levels of opium in Afghan children, some as young as 14 months old, who had been passively exposed by adult drug users in their homes. Full news...
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April 8, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A survey showed over one million drug addicts, including women and children, in Afghanistan spent 1.5 million US dollars to buy drugs on a daily basis, an official said on Thursday. The spokesman for the counter-narcotics ministry Zalmay Afzali told a press conference here the survey revealed the number of drug addicts had increased in the country. "An addict uses drug costing one US dollar a day," he added. Full news...
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March 31, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Long the world's largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, Afghanistan has now become the top supplier of cannabis, with large-scale cultivation in half of its provinces, the United Nations said on Wednesday. Between 10,000 and 24,000 hectares of cannabis are grown every year in Afghanistan, with major cultivation in 17 out 34 provinces, the U.N. drug agency (UNODC) said in its first report on cannabis production in Afghanistan. Full news...
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March 11, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: Drug abuse is rife in the Afghan police force with up to four out of 10 recruits testing positive for illegal drugs in some areas, a US report says. The report for the US Congress said the illegal drugs trade "undermines virtually every aspect" of efforts to secure Afghanistan. Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's opium and the drugs trade is a key source of funding for the insurgency. Full news...
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February 7, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Veterans Today: Open today’s newspaper and get a map of the battle zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. You say they aren’t there? Open today’s newspaper and find out how many troops our enemies have, who their leaders are. Can’t find that either? Look in the paper to find out why we are fighting at all. Not there too? This isn’t half of it, we aren’t just being kept in the dark. It goes much further. Lets look at some things that just don’t add up. Full news...
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February 2, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: From the watchtower at an Afghan outpost, the Dutch soldiers can follow the growth of the pretty poppies that may one day pay for the weapons that kill them or their comrades. Taliban insurgents waging an increasingly deadly campaign against foreign troops make at least 100 million dollars a year from taxing Afghanistan's opium trade -- the world's biggest, US and Afghan officials say. Full news...
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January 25, 2010 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Afghan drug lords are smuggling more heroin through Iran to Europe, easing the burden on a traditional trafficking route through ex-Soviet Central Asia, Tajikistan's drug control chief said in an interview. With a long, leaky border with Afghanistan and lawlessness inherited from a bloody 1992-1997 civil war, Tajikistan has long been a haven for drug smuggling out of Afghanistan which produces nearly all of the world's opium, used to make heroin. Full news...
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December 24, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AP: The State Department's internal watchdog on Wednesday criticized the agency's nearly $2 billion anti-drug effort in Afghanistan for poor oversight and lack of a long-term strategy. The department's inspector general said the Afghanistan counter-narcotics program is hampered by too few personnel and rampant corruption among Afghan officials. Full news...
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December 13, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CounterPunch: So Mr. Obama is getting ready to surge-again-in Afghanistan partly to fight opium trafficking. But an important report just released by the World Health Organization entitled The Global Tobacco Epidemic shows that Obama cannot possibly be waging a “war on drugs”-or else he would direct his attention towards tobacco executives and away from the Taliban. Full news...
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December 1, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: Afghan Minister of Public Health Sayed Mohammad Amin Fatime warned Tuesday that AIDS transmission among illegal drug users remains the main factor of spreading the disease in the post-Taliban country. "Addiction, especially using heroin through injection, continues to be the main channel of transmission of AIDS in Afghanistan," the minister said in a notice for Tuesday's World AIDS Day. Full news...
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November 29, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Press TV: Unprecedented levels of drug addiction among Afghan women have raised concerns as the lucrative narcotic industry hurtles onwards. The Governor of Helmand Gulab Mangal says women comprise of 30 percent of the 70,000 drug addicts in the southern Afghan province, the website for the British state broadcaster BBC reported in its Farsi edition. The percentage amounts to 13,000-14,000 women, he added. Full news...
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November 5, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
FPIF: As President Obama and his advisors debate future troop levels for Afghanistan, a new report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) muddies the water on one of the most important issues in the debate — the effects of Afghanistan's drug production. The report, entitled "Addiction, Crime, and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium," gives the false impression that the Taliban are the main culprits behind Afghanistan's skyrocketing drug production. Full news...
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November 2, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TruthDig: The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality. War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women. Full news...
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October 28, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home. Full news...
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October 28, 2009 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Time: But this time, if the New York Times charges are true, the revelations that Wali Karzai is both a major drug trafficker and that he has been protected not just by his brother but by CIA operatives as well, establishes a chain of causality between the efforts of U.S. intelligence to obtain information and influence, and drug monies that pay for a insurgency that has taken 53 American lives this month... Full news...
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