Afghan Opium Production Skyrockets

Illegal drugs have affected the entire world. Thus, the entire international community must cooperate in the campaign against the pandemic.

Underlining the need for such cooperation, Ali Hashemi, the director of Iran’s Anti-Drug Headquarters, said that Iran cannot deal with the problem of drug smuggling in the region without the help of other countries.

Iran is a neighbor of Afghanistan, which is currently the center of global poppy cultivation and production. Afghan officials say that studies by the United Nations and Afghanistan’s Anti-Drug Office have shown that poppy cultivation has declined in the Central Asian country, but it is not yet clear to what extent. Should this allay concerns about drug smuggling in the region and the rest of the world?

In 1988, about 350 tons of opium was produced in Afghanistan. By 2004, the figure reached 5000 tons. That is to say, there has been a 14-fold increase in Afghan opium production in less than two decades.

Research shows that there has been a 40 percent annual increase in poppy cultivation and opium production since the United States established a military presence in the country in 2001.

With a glance at these alarming statistics, one can easily understand the world’s concern about the scourge of drug smuggling, despite the efforts of the international community, the United Nations, and Afghanistan’s neighbors.

The United States and its allies ostensibly occupied Afghanistan to fight terrorism, the Taliban, and drug smuggling. Instead, the U.S. has become a factor behind the increase in drug smuggling and may even be secretly cooperating with the Taliban.

U.S. forces have taken no serious action to curtail drug production in Afghanistan, because the U.S. is determined to expand global drug addiction and smuggling to help it realize goals.

The expansion of global drug smuggling and addiction, besides providing windfall financial profits, exacerbates poverty, increases moral corruption, and keeps people backwards. This, in turn, helps the U.S. assert its hegemony over the world.

Europe is an ally of the United States in this ominous, neocolonial endeavor, sadly reminiscent of the Opium War. Britain, the aggressor during the original Opium War, has been officially tasked with dealing with the drug problem in Afghanistan, but has taken no useful measures in this regard.

Since the scourge of drugs and its myriad associated problems have no borders, the United States and Europe will without doubt be the final victims of the worldwide plague that they have deliberately helped promote.