Trump’s Afghan Speech Ignored Record Opium Profits Funding Taliban

U.S. President Donald Trump, while announcing on Monday his new strategy for dealing with the nearly 16-year-old war in Afghanistan, failed to explicitly address the historic levels of opium production there, a lucrative source of funding for the Taliban, the country’s leading terrorist organization.

According to U.S. Gen. John Nicholson, the top commander of American and NATO troops in Afghanistan, Taliban jihadists generate more than 60 percent of their funding from the cultivation and production of opium, the main ingredient in heroin.

Moreover, some officials have indicated that the illicit multi-billion-dollar poppy crop business in Afghanistan, the world’s top supplier of opium and heroin, is likely fueling the record number of deadly drug overdoses in the United States.

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