Taliban jihadists “cannot win” under the level of pressure U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategy is applying on the terrorist group, declared Gen. John Nicholson, the top commander of American-NATO forces in Afghanistan, this week.
U.S. and Afghan forces targeted Taliban drug labs for the first time on Sunday in the first significant use of new authorities under the Trump administration, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Monday.
The estimated production of opium and area under poppy cultivation has already reached unprecedented levels this year in Afghanistan, according to the United Nations.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s South Asia strategy will focus on fighting the lucrative opium trade that is currently providing more than half of the Taliban’s estimated $400 million in annual funding, Secretary of Defense James Mattis told lawmakers, echoing other American officials.
U.S. President Donald Trump, while announcing on Monday his new strategy for dealing with the nearly 16-year-old war in Afghanistan, failed to explicitly address the historic levels of opium production there, a lucrative source of funding for the Taliban, the country’s leading terrorist organization.
President Donald Trump’s administration has resuscitated the U.S.-backed efforts to combat the deadly opium crop and its heroin derivative in Afghanistan, triggering an increase in interdiction and eradication activity after counternarcotics operations nearly disappeared over the last few years.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States government should look into the potential relationship between record production of opium in Afghanistan and the heroin crisis in the United States that has killed tens of thousands of Americans, a top U.S. watchdog tells Breitbart News.
According to a new study from Iran’s Drug Control Organization, the number of people regularly consuming drugs has grown from 1.3 million six years ago to at least 2.8 million today. The vast majority of these drug users favor opium, which flows in from Afghanistan.
A dramatic drop in U.S.-funded opium eradication efforts in Afghanistan over the last few years is fueling a growing heroin addiction problem afflicting tens of thousands of women and some children in the war-ravaged country, reports the Washington Post (WaPo).
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) alleges that it captured the opium-rich Chaprahr district in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province from the Taliban, following clashes between the two groups that left dozens dead, including a nine-year-old girl.
The American government placed a revised version of the U.S. counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan “on hold for more than two years” while cultivation and production of opium and its deadly heroin derivative has reached historic levels in the war-ravaged nation, reports a watchdog agency.
The United States had the ability to use aerial spraying to destroy the opium crops in Afghanistan used by the Taliban to fund their terrorist activities after 9/11 but refused to do so out of concern that the plants “might be too close to a mosque,” declared Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) during a congressional hearing.
Jihadists from the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in Afghanistan have attacked Taliban militants in the northern part of the country over the lucrative opium trafficking business, reportedly revealed a spokesman for the governor of Jawzjan province where the clashes took place.
The Islamic State’s branch in Afghanistan is likely involved in the lucrative trade of opium and its deadly heroin derivative despite its claims to the contrary, experts tell Breitbart News.
An estimated 300 U.S. Marines are heading to a Taliban stronghold in the southern Afghanistan province of Helmand, one of the deadliest regions of the ongoing war for coalition forces located along the Pakistan border, reports Marine Corps Times.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly has largely blamed Latin American drug cartels for the unprecedented 52,000-plus drug overdose deaths in America during 2015 alone, the latest year for which data is available.
The “nexus” between Latin American drug cartels and Islamic terrorist groups like the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) affiliate Boko Haram, which controls Africa-based smuggling routes towards Europe, “is real” and expected to “get more sophisticated,” declared U.S. Department of Defense Secretary John Kelly.
The U.S. military, perhaps inadvertently, may have eradicated opium poppy crops when it dropped the “mother of all bombs” on Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists in the Achin district of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan.
The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, the capital of the world’s top producer of opium and its heroin derivative, has fired at least six employees for allegedly using and distributing drugs.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is plagued by financial troubles, with annual revenue falling by over 50 percent over the last two years, a study finds.
An estimated 300 Marines are reportedly gearing up to deploy to the Taliban stronghold and top opium-producing province of Helmand, Afghanistan, as part of a task force expected to train members of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF).
Efforts to eradicate opium in Afghanistan dropped by nearly 90 percent last year as the cultivation of the illicit drug, which as heroin provides an estimated 60 percent of Taliban funding, reached unprecedented levels.
Only an estimated one percent of the heroin seized by law enforcement in the United States originates from the Southwest Asia region that includes Afghanistan, the top producer of opium and heroin in the world, reports the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in its latest National Drug Threat Assessment.
The estimated opium poppy plant production and its cultivation area in Afghanistan have increased more than 25-fold over the course of the ongoing war in the country to 4,800 metric tons and 201,000 hectares (ha), respectively, according to the United Nations.
A New York Times article reveals that Mexico’s opium harvest is more profitable for Mexican children than a school education would be. America is only just starting to wake up to the scourge of heroin abuse among Midwest middle class youth. The spread of black tar heroin and its rising popularity among a demographic that prefers the heroin high—and lower price tag—to Oxycontin pills is truly horrifying.
The plants growing along an increasing number of Mexican hillsides reflect trends in illegal drug use here in the United States. While marijuana fields easily outnumbered poppy plantations in prime Mexican growing regions, both government and international-agency statistics show those numbers have reversed as Mexican-origin heroin use in the US has exploded.
Estimated opium production in Afghanistan, an important source of funding for the Taliban, has increased 35-fold since the U.S.-led invasion, from 185 tons in 2001 to 6,400 last year, data maintained by the United Nations shows.
