The strategic folly of United States (US) President Joe Biden’s Afghan policy has been laid bare in recent weeks. First, the country came back under the control of the Pakistan-reared Taliban. The announcement of the interim government’s composition then dashed any remaining (naive) hope that this Taliban regime would be different from the one the US and its allies ousted in 2001.
Afghanistan is by far the world's biggest producer of heroin, supplying between 80-90 percent of global output, making the drugs policies of the new Taliban-led government of crucial importance.The price of heroin, addiction levels, as well as the extent of drug-related violence and smuggling will be influenced by the new rulers of a country that counts opium production as one of its biggest industries.International efforts over the last 20 years to eradicate the farming of poppies, whos
In a hut on the top of a fog-licked mountain in northern Lao, Vo Pali is getting high.His poison is opium, a sap extracted from poppies grown illegally by the poor hill tribes in the Communist state's rugged, inaccessible uplands."I smoke three times a day," the 60-year-old ethnic Hmong villager says in a barely audible rasp of his 30-year habit. "It has damaged my life. I have no income.
