opium-poppy

Helmand province is known as the world capital of opium-poppy production, and the Afghan government says part of reasserting its authority means seizing illegal drugs found as the offensive progresses.

U.S. and Afghan Troops Expand Control in Marjah Michael M. Phillips 2010

Anecdotal examples crop up every day, from a popcorn vendor who appears in the central district of Marja in the midst of a NATO military operation, to even the opium-poppy industry.

Afghanistan's Most Important Natural Resource and Dane Stangler 2010

Helmand province is known as the world capital of opium-poppy production, and the Afghan government says part of reasserting its authority means seizing illegal drugs found as the offensive progresses.

U.S. and Afghan Troops Expand Control in Marjah Michael M. Phillips 2010

Because approximately 40% of the Afghan economy comes from foreign assistance while another 40% appears to be underwritten by the opium-poppy industry there is great hope that minerals will help develop the economy.

Afghanistan's Most Important Natural Resource and Dane Stangler 2010

Aided by their cut of profits from suddenly resurgent coca and opium-poppy cultivation -- in a country long touted by U.S. officials as a success story in the war against drugs -- the guerrillas are ambushing cops, blowing up electricity pylons and even hatched a plot to detonate a car bomb outside the American Embassy in Lima.

TURNING THE CLOCK BACK TO CHAOS? 2008

NEWSWEEK has obtained a pessimistic DEA intelligence survey reporting that Colombian traffickers are now experimenting with opium-poppy cultivation and may well diversify into heroin sales by the mid-1990s.

The Widening Drug War 2008

The troops are working alongside British forces in Helmand province emphasis added — the world's largest opium-poppy region and site of the fiercest Taliban resistance over the last two years.

Marines in Helmand/US Afghan role overall 2008

Since 2001, the U. S.-supported aerial - spray program has reduced the coca crop by 33 percent and the opium-poppy crop by 68 percent, removing billions of dollars 'worth of drugs from the world market.

Mail Call: A Cool Muslim Metropolis 2007

The country's armed forces were first used to eradicate marijuana and opium-poppy crops in the late 1970s, and Calderón's predecessor, Vicente Fox, sent hundreds of troops into six northern states in the late spring and summer of 2005 to help restore a semblance of law and order.

Calderón's Unwinnable War 2007

In fact, State Department officials acknowledge, coca production since the mid-1990s has soared 250 percent while Colombia's opium-poppy crop, which barely existed five years ago, is now the source of 50 percent of the heroin seized in the United States.

Colombia: Man Without A Plan 2007