NATO Projects Biggest Heroin Crop of All Time
2008Barry Weisleder 2008-03The page as the paper published it (Wayback Machine) →
From the paper's own web edition, recovered from the Internet Archive: the text as the paper put it online, not machine-read. The printed issue of March 2008 is not held.
by Barry Weisleder
Just to remind its U.K. readers of the ‘noble cause’ for which British troops are occupying, killing people and getting killed in Afghanistan, London’s The Daily Mail reported in February:
“The opium trade now constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy of Afghanistan. This is the highest harvests of opium the world as ever seen. But there is now more than just raw opium produced there.
“In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with NATO troops.”