By Brian Knowlton, The New York Times
The United States-led counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan, which is critical to hopes of cutting off the flow of money to the Taliban and curtailing rampant corruption in the central government, lacks a long-term strategy, clear objectives and a plan for handing over responsibility to Afghans, the State Department inspector general said in a report issued Wednesday.
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By DOUGLAS BIRCH, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – Afghanistan's opium production fell 10 percent last year and prices are at their lowest in a decade, meaning "the bottom is starting to fall out" of the world's largest opium market, the U.N. said Wednesday.
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By Peter Graff
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half-brother denied a report on Thursday that British forces had seized tons of opium on his land last month, saying it was aimed at hurting the president a week before an election.
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NEW YORK (AFP) – A US court on Thursday sentenced an Afghan tribal warlord and alleged Taliban associate to life in prison on charges that he imported heroin to the United States.
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BERLIN (AFP) – NATO's supreme commander has sparked a row among top brass with "guidance" for opium dealers in Afghanistan to be killed even without proof of ties to insurgents, a German magazine said Thursday.
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By PAUL AMES, Associated Press Writer
BUDAPEST, Hungary – NATO defense ministers Friday authorized their troops in Afghanistan to attack drug barons blamed for pumping up to $100 million a year into the coffers of resurgent Taliban fighters.
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By James Risen, The International Herald Tribune
When Afghan security forces found an enormous cache of heroin hidden beneath concrete blocks in a tractor-trailer outside Kandahar in 2004, the local Afghan commander quickly impounded the truck and notified his boss.
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By THOMAS SCHWEICH, The New York Times
On March 1, 2006, I met Hamid Karzai for the first time. It was a clear, crisp day in Kabul. The Afghan president joined President and Mrs. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Ambassador Ronald Neumann to dedicate the new United States Embassy. He thanked the American people for all they had done for Afghanistan. I was a senior counternarcotics official recently arrived in a country that supplied 90 percent of the world’s heroin. I took to heart Karzai’s strong statements against the Afghan drug trade. That was my first mistake.
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By Kate Clark, BBC News
The Taleban made an estimated $100m (Ł50m) in 2007 from Afghan farmers growing poppy for the opium trade, the United Nations says.
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AFP - The United Nations called Wednesday on Afghan authorities to target corrupt senior officials involved in drug trafficking after a new report said heroin and opium production here hit record levels.
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BBC News - A former US ambassador to the United Nations has criticised President George Bush's attempts to eradicate the opium poppy fields in Afghanistan. Richard Holbrooke has described the US policy as "spectacularly unsuccessful".
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By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer
The fields of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan were free of opium poppies this year, a success touted often by Afghan and international officials. But one look at Mohammad Alam's fields uncovers an emerging drug problem.
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By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer
A "tsunami" of opium will hit Afghanistan's neighbors if border security remains weak and officials fail to intercept the drug, whose profits fund terrorism, the U.N. anti-drug chief said Wednesday.
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KABUL (AFP) — The Afghan government said it had asked international military forces based here to clear Taliban-led insurgents from opium-growing areas before Afghan troops move in to destroy poppy crops.
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Reuters - British efforts to combat opium production in southern Afghanistan have completely failed, Afghanistan's first vice-president said on Sunday, calling for tougher measures, including aerial spraying.
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