The United States has spent more than $800 billion in Afghanistan. This country’s longest running war, 16 years and counting, shows no sign of ending. Donald Trump recently committed more U.S. troops to fight the Taliban. But here’s the question, where does money come from to fund an insurgency? Afghanistan, after all, is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Look no further than the ever expanding fields of poppies. For farmers all over Afghanistan, it is the cash crop. Those poppies produce opium which is made into heroin and this week the Afghans are reporting via Radio Free Europe that poppy production is through the roof, up 87% over last year. Street value for the heroin produced from the poppies is $1.4 billion. That will buy a lot of bullets, and fund an insurgent army. As this report from The Nation concludes, without poppies, there would be no war.
So where, in that impoverished, arid land, has the Taliban been getting nearly a billion dollars a year? According to the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, a single Afghan province, Helmand, “produces a significant amount of the opium globally that turns into heroin and provides about 60 percent of the Taliban funding.” The country’s president, Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank official, agrees. “Without drugs,” he’s said, “this war would have been long over. The heroin is a very important driver of this war.”
Last year, about 2000 acres of poppies were eradicated. But 300,000 popped up in other parts of the country. That’s not good. The United States has spent billions trying to rid the country of opium and it only gets worse. Meanwhile, Donald Trump commits more soldiers to this hellhole. America has lost more than 2400 troops and more than 20,000 have been wounded since 2001. Until the poppies are gone, this will be a war without end.