Word: opium
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...China, many of its residents wore Burmese longyis, or sarongs, and women's faces were painted beige with the thanaka paste used in Burma as a skin salve. Despite the occasional truck rumbling past overloaded with teak logs from Burma, Nabang felt like it was just emerging from an opium-induced...
...some of the ethnic militias aren't just looking out for their downtrodden populaces. They're also protecting their own interests in a region that, after all, extends into the infamous Golden Triangle. Starved of other economic means, some rebel armies have resorted to dubious funding schemes, like selling opium, illegal timber and methamphetamines. During the ceasefire period, the junta largely turned a blind eye to such businesses, which financed spacious villas and golf courses for some ethnic commanders...
...General David McKiernan, who was replaced about the time the troops started arriving. McKiernan's plan reflected his experience in conventional warfare: he chose to deploy the troops where the bad guys were - largely in Helmand province on the Pakistani border, home of nearly 60% of the world's opium crop, a place that was firmly in Taliban control. But pursuing conventional warfare in Afghanistan is about as effective as using a football in a tennis match. The Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine says you go where the people are concentrated and protect them, then gradually move into the sectors...
...Pashtun majority, home of both the Karzai family and Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban. It is where the Taliban began. It has been run, in a staggeringly corrupt manner, by Hamid Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai - who, according to U.S. investigators, has extensive links to the opium trade. As the Karzai government has grown more unpopular, the situation in Kandahar has deteriorated. The Taliban own the night, slipping death threats under the doors of those who would cooperate with the government. In Iraq the military's counterinsurgency strategy turned around a similarly bleak urban situation - notably in Baghdad...
...Afghanistan GAINS IN THE DRUG WAR Could Afghanistan's opium boom be over? According to a U.N. report, poppy cultivation has crashed over the past year, with prices down a third since last summer to their lowest level since the late 1990s. Farmers planted 22% fewer acres in 2009, but U.N. officials say Afghan poppies are now higher-yielding: overall production dipped only 10%, prompting the report to call the NATO campaign to eradicate opium crops a "failure." Afghanistan produces the raw opium for more than 90% of the world's heroin...