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Thursday March 28, 2024

US strikes on Taliban opium labs won’t work

By Reuters
November 24, 2017
KABUL: As US and Afghan forces pound Taliban drug factories this week, farmers in the country´s largest opium producing-province and narcotics experts say the strategy just repeats previous failed efforts to stamp out the trade.
US Army General John Nicholson, who heads Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, announced on Monday a new strategy of attacking opium factories, saying he wanted to hit the Taliban "where it hurts, in their narcotics financing".
Critics say the policy risks further civilian casualties and turning large swathes of the population dependent on poppy cultivation against the Afghan government. "The Taliban will not be affected by this as much as ordinary people," said Mohammad Nabi, a poppy farmer in Nad Ali district in the southern province of Helmand, the heartland of opium production. "Farmers are not growing poppies for fun.
If factories are closed and businesses are gone, then how will they provide food for their families?"Opium production in Afghanistan reached record highs this year, up 87 percent, according to the United Nations. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said last week that output of opium from poppy seeds in Afghanistan, the world´s main source of heroin, stood at around 9,000 metric tons in 2017, worth an estimated $1.4 billion on leaving the farms.
In Helmand, cultivation area increased 79 percent. Publicising the new strategy, which he said was open-ended, Nicholson showed one video of an F-22 fighter jet dropping 250-pound bombs on two buildings, emphasising that a nearby third building was left unscathed.