Word: talibans
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...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 Stanley McChrystal had warned of the offensive weeks in advance. The drug traffickers and many of their Taliban protectors had cleared out long before Operation Moshtarak (Dari for together) began. (See pictures of Person of the Year 2009 runner-up General Stanley McChrystal...
...East. The U.N. reckons Marjah has the world's highest concentration of opium production. So Operation Moshtarak is more than a military offensive; it is also the biggest counternarcotics operation ever attempted. It marks a new emphasis by the White House and the Pentagon on choking off the Taliban from their drug funds and ending their support among the Pashtun tribes of southern Afghanistan...
...crackdown is a big change from the Bush Administration's counternarcotics policy in Afghanistan, which never got beyond occasional attempts to raze poppy fields. Once the war in Iraq began, U.S. officials said they lacked the resources to fight both the drug syndicates and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Also, many of the Afghan warlords whom the U.S. relied on to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda were involved in the drug trade. Now, officials say, the Obama Administration is taking a tough approach to drugs in Afghanistan, sparing no one, not even friends and associates of President Hamid Karzai. "Everyone...
...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...
...pictures of the battle against the Taliban...