US watchdog: Afghanistan poppy production at record levels despite counternarcotics efforts
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s opium economy is booming despite $7.6 billion in U.S. counternarcotics efforts since 2002, federal auditors said in a report released Tuesday.
The most recent findings by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction come just a few months ahead of the withdrawal of coalition combat troops, when the vast majority of U.S. and NATO forces will leave the country.
SIGAR cited a United Nations tally of net land area used for poppy cultivation in 2013: more than 500,000 acres, a 36 percent jump from the previous year and a historic record. The lion’s share of that cultivation, the U.N. says, comes from Helmand and Kandahar provinces, two regions that were the focus of the 33,000-strong American troop surge four years ago.
“That is equivalent to more than 800 square miles — more than twice the size of all the boroughs of New York City, or 12 times the size of the District of Columbia — planted solid with opium poppies,” SIGAR wrote in a previous report in January.
http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/us-watchdog-afghanistan-poppy-production-at-record-levels-despite-counternarcotics-efforts-1.309215