Opium in Afghanistan Reaches All-Time Highest Level, Despite US Counternarcotics Efforts

[Purveyor]

WASHINGTON, October 22 (RIA Novosti) - Despite spending over $7.6 billion of taxpayer money on counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, opium poppy cultivation reached its highest levels in 2013, according to an October report from John F. Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

“Despite spending over $7 billion to combat opium poppy cultivation and to develop the Afghan government’s counternarcotics capacity, opium poppy cultivation levels in Afghanistan hit an all-time high in 2013,” said Sopko in a report, addressed to the heads of the US State Department, Department of Defense, Department of Justice, and USAID.

Citing figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), he continued that “the avalue of the opium and its derivative products produced in Afghanistan was nearly $3 billion in 2013, up from $2 billion in 2012. This represents an increase of 50 percent in a single year.”

The US government is moving toward a substantial troop reduction by the end of 2014. According to statements from the White House, US troops levels will drop to 9,800 by the end of the year, and down to roughly half that number by the end of 2015. The strategy has been challenged by some at the Pentagon, who see the need for a greater troop presence.

Prior to this October, Sopko warned in a January 2013 Senate hearing that the resurgent opium cultivation meant the United States could lose 12 years of counternarcotics efforts and nearly $10 billion total in American counternarcotics investments in the country since 2002. His figures combined $7 billion in explicit counternarcotics programs and $3 billion in agriculture stabilization, aimed at countering opium cultivation.

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http://en.ria.ru/world/20141022/194414448/Opium-in-Afghanistan-Reaches-All-Time-Highest-Level-Despite-US-Counternarcotics-Efforts.html

[NaturalHigh]

1. How many billions have we flushed down the drug war now?

[scarystuffyo]

2. The only opium trade we actively pursued to stop was from the Taliban

Karzai's and the opium trade from the government was left alone.

[msongs]

3. they need a religion that is opposed to drug use :-) nt

[bobGandolf]

4. 7.6 BILLION, WASTED!

What a disgrace.

[Octafish]

5. Alfred McCoy: Afghanistan as a Drug War

"These three eras of almost constant warfare fueled a relentless rise in Afghanistan's opium harvest -- from just 250 tons in 1979 to 8,200 tons in 2007. For the past five years, the Afghan opium harvest has accounted for as much as 50% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and provided the prime ingredient for over 90% of the world's heroin supply."

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175225/