Word: heroines
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...hardly news that Afghanistan's huge opium crops supply more than 90% of the world's heroin. But now U.N. officials say Afghanistan is also the world's biggest producer of another drug - hashish. In its first attempt to calculate how much cannabis is grown in the country, the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime says in a report released in Kabul on Wednesday that Afghan farmers earned up to $94 million last year from selling 1,500 to 3,500 tons of hash - the resin extracted from cannabis crops...
When U.S. marines raided the notorious Lachoya opium bazaar in the southwestern Afghan region of Marjah at the start of their massive military offensive there last month, they found 700 kg of raw opium and 25 kilos of heroin. Anywhere else in the world, that would have been a major drug bust, but for Marjah, it was mere crumbs. After all, when Afghan and U.S. counternarcotics agents raided the same market nearly a year ago, the haul was measured in tons, not kilos. But the Marines lacked the element of surprise; to minimize civilian casualties, U.S. and NATO commander General...
...Marjah is showing why separating the Taliban from their narcodollars is so difficult. Not only did the drug syndicates get away with much of their stash and their heroin labs, but also there's no consensus among NATO commanders, counternarcotics experts and Afghan Cabinet officials on what to do next. The opium trade is woven into the fabric of the economy of southern Afghanistan. In Marjah, as elsewhere, the Taliban protected the drug syndicates for a price, reaping millions of dollars from the opium bounty. But ordinary residents benefited from the drug trade too; it provided a lucrative crop...
Another option for Marjah is to let the farmers harvest the opium and sell it off - and then grab the men who try to smuggle it to the syndicates' heroin labs elsewhere in Afghanistan and in global markets beyond. This would punish the traffickers and their Taliban protectors without hurting the farmers. "Once the farmers are handed their money, we'll close in on the traffickers' trucks and labs," says a NATO general. But counternarcotics agents worry that the drug lords will find ways to get their hands on the opium anyway. The weak link in the chain...
...love-hate." Since the 2002 Bali bombings, Australian travelers to Indonesia now receive a travel warning which Indonesia says promotes an overly negative image of the country. In 2006 several Australian drug smugglers - dubbed the Bali Nine - were sentenced to life imprisonment after being caught planning to smuggle heroin from Bali to Australia. Three are currently on death row in Indonesia. The next year, an Australian coroner ruled that the killings of the Balibo Five, five journalists - including two Australians, who were murdered in Indonesia in 1975 - were committed deliberately by Indonesian special force soldiers. A war-crimes investigation...