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January 25, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Wall Street Journal: The U.S. military has blacklisted Afghanistan’s largest private airline, alleging it is smuggling “bulk” quantities of opium on civilian flights to Tajikistan, a corridor through which the drugs reach the rest of the world. Kam Air was barred this month from receiving U.S. military contracts by U.S. Central Command chief Marine Gen. James Mattis, according to U.S. military officials. Full news...
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January 9, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Vanity Fair: “Just look at this view,” said my guide, as he waved his arm expansively from right to left. We had just emerged onto the sun-drenched roof terrace of a so-called narco-villa in Kabul’s Sherpur neighborhood. Sherpur is the epicenter of an eye-catching architectural style in a district where the gusher of money from drugs and corruption has found full expression. Full news...
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November 26, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Killid Group: Polecharkhi prisoners suffer from sexually transmitted diseases and drug abuse. Killid interviewed prisoners and a doctor in the Kabul prison to find that opium addiction and diseases like HIV-Aids are rampant among the 7,000 inmates. While 70 prisoners have been diagnosed with syphilis, 150 of the 700 prisoners on drugs were injecting the drug, according to Dr Hemat who leads a medical group in Polecharkhi. Full news...
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November 20, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: The amount of Afghan farmland planted with opium poppies has increased by nearly 20% this year, after high prices in 2011 tempted more farmers into growing the drug. Blight and bad weather meant the harvest of opium in the world's biggest producer of “black gold” fell by a third, according to the United Nations annual opium survey. But in the longer run that shortage could help keep prices near record highs, fueling further expansion of poppy farming. Full news...
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November 14, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan is fast becoming a major source of opium, and local informal powerbrokers are making millions of dollars from the trade. The authorities appear powerless to act against major figures in the trade, who have occupied large swathes of land that in theory belongs to the state and are reaping huge rewards from the poppy trade, backed by small private armies. Full news...
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September 21, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Huffington Post: With over one million Afghanis addicted to drugs, Afghanistan has lagged far behind when it comes to curtailing its bourgeoning drug production and trafficking. In the video above, CNN reporter Lindsey Tugman sheds light on the exacerbating drug crisis in Afghanistan and the lack of collective action in the international community to provide a solution. Full news...
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August 13, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Prensa Latina: A little more than 10 years after the invasion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Afghanistan is still the main generator of opium with calculations estimated just over 90 percent of world production. This element, translated into the inner realities of the invaded country, implies a figure close to 500 million USD in the gross domestic product (GDP) a year and that obviously Hamid Karzai’s regime does not take into account. Full news...
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June 4, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
USA Today: Zarghoona, 37, sits on the ground in a courtyard of an impoverished Turkmen village in the northwestern province of Kunduz. Her wrinkled face make her appear twice her age. “I am from this village,” she says. “I have five sons and three daughters; one of my daughters died, though.” Losing a child is not uncommon in a nation where one in 10 children die before the age of 5 due often to preventable illnesses such as respiratory infections. Full news...
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April 17, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Opium farming will increase across Afghanistan in 2012, driven by insecurity, massive corruption and economic fears for the future, spreading to more areas than it has in the past four to five years, the United Nations has warned. Drugs help fund the Taliban insurgency, but Afghanistan’s elite is also earning huge amounts from the trade... Full news...
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April 1, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Anita lifted the sky-blue burqa from her face, revealing glazed eyes and cracked lips from years of smoking opium, and touched her saggy belly, still round from giving birth to her seventh child a month ago. “I can’t give breast milk to my baby,” said the 32-year-old Anita, who like other women interviewed for this story, declined to give her full name. “I’m scared he’ll get addicted.” Full news...
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March 7, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Wall Street Journal: The U.S. is investigating allegations that some officials in the Afghan Air Force, which was established largely with American funds, have been using aircraft to ferry narcotics and illegal weapons around the country, American officials told The Wall Street Journal. Two probes of the Afghan Air Force, or AAF, are under way—one led by the U.S. military coalition and another by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, officials said. Full news...
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February 18, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: It’s below freezing, but the Afghan lies rigid in the snow of Kabul. He doesn’t move. His arms and legs are bare. He has overdosed on heroin. He only lives to see another day because of a charity. “Every night I feel I'm going to die. I sleep in the cold. I suffer,” said Zaman, whose clear blue eyes stand out from his bony, filthy face as he stands shivering in the snow near the fallen addict. Full news...
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February 10, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Two years ago, Mohammad Reza was a 17-year-old student in Ghoryan, a district in the Herat province of western Afghanistan, spending half his days at school and the other half playing football with friends. Among those friends, he noticed, some were making huge amounts of money. Reza was fascinated to see them growing richer, igniting in him a desire to have what they had – to own a Shehab motorcycle, to have bracelets and rings and an iPhone. Full news...
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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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