Word: opium
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...source of 92% of the world's heroin, Afghanistan's opium farmers are easily blamed for the ready availability of the drug on the streets of Europe and Asia (most heroin in the U.S. still comes from opium crops in Latin America). But Afghans have historically seen themselves as producers of opium, not consumers, citing a Koranic loophole that prohibits intoxicants but fails to proscribe their production...
...heroin addicts in the capital city, Kabul, have doubled to 14,000 since 2003. According to the first ever nationwide survey on drug use in Afghanistan by the UNODC, there are nearly 50,000 heroin users in the country as a whole, and an additional 150,000 who use opium. "For those in the West, that may not look like a lot," says Fatimie. "But for me it's a big number. It's a warning...
...Today opium cultivation in Afghanistan is a growth industry. What crude oil is to the Middle East, poppies are to Afghanistan. A senior Afghan official estimates that 30% of the country's farmers now grow poppies, while the U.N. estimates that the area under cultivation increased 59% in the past year. Experts suggest that the drug situation in Afghanistan is moving from one that was manageable to one that is verging on being out of control...
When the Taliban came to power in 1996, according to the DEA, Noorzai reached the peak of his influence. While Taliban leader Mullah Omar's tribal background is not known, he was always reliably supported by the Noorzai tribe. Even when the ruling Taliban was cracking down on the opium trade, Noorzai's closeness to the regime allowed Noorzai to become one of just four big traffickers permitted to grow and process poppies, according to Jamil Karzai, a current member of the Afghan parliament and a second cousin of President Hamid Karzai's. In 1997, the DEA says, Noorzai...
...Afghanistan, a weak government has produced a security vacuum that in turn inhibits economic development and diversification, forcing impoverished farmers to grow lucrative crops like the opium poppy for cash. Any deliberate crop destruction carried out by the Afghan government often drives poor farmers to sympathize with the insurgency. Just two weeks ago, despite international pressure, President Karzai said Afghanistan would not carry out chemical spraying of poppy crops, given the intense level of opposition among farmers...