The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has just released its Afghanistan Opium Survey for 2008.
The report highlights the fact that Taliban-affiliated war-lords, drug-lords and insurgents have extracted “almost half a billion dollars of tax revenue from drug farming, production and trafficking” in 2008. As reported, “not surprisingly the insurgents’ war machine has proven so resilient, despite the heavy pounding by Afghan and allied forces.”
The Hilmand province, the main Taliban operational center, remained the single largest opium cultivating province with 103,500 ha in 2008 (66% of the total cultivation in Afghanistan).
