Afghanistan’s Opium Solution

Feb 19, 2016 | Ryan Mernin
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For fourteen years, beginning in 2001, the U.S. fought a war on two fronts in Afghanistan: one to destroy the Taliban, the other to destroy the world’s largest supply of opium. In the first case, it was initially successful in helping Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance to beat the Taliban into temporary hiding and to set up a rickety government, only to watch the country fall into corruption and sectarian chaos as the years rolled by. But the fighpoppiest against opium was the true failure. The installation of the Northern Alliance government led to the return and exponential increase in production of the crop, which today is used to make some 85% of heroine on the world market. The short-lived Taliban government, as it turns out, was the only government ever to successfully stop opium production – by threatening to kill poppy farmers.