US Strategy: Weakening Poppies, Strengthening War Profiteers
NPR, citing the Washington Post , details a decade-long CIA operation aimed at 'degrading' Afghanistan's opium crop. An entire generation was told this was about stability, nation-building, and drug interdiction. What they forget to mention is that while local farmers struggled, the US defense industry saw its stock soar. This 'strategy' didn't curb the global drug trade; it merely shifted its
geography and methods, while providing a lucrative, never-ending justification for military presence. One might wonder who profits when stability is perpetually out of reach and civilian livelihoods are deliberately destroyed on dubious pretenses. It certainly wasn't the Afghan people.