The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in a released report on Saturday said that Washington had spent nearly $9 billion to fight narcotics in the past seventeen years in Afghanistan.

 

John Sopko has said the value of narcotics was greater than the value of the country’s exported goods.

The report states that although Afghanistan’s area under opium-poppy cultivation fell by 20% in 2018, it remained at the second-highest level since the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) began monitoring it in 1994.

The report has also voiced concerns over increasing use of “tablet K” in Afghanistan.

“The number of Afghans involved in cultivation and trafficking of illicit drugs are more than the total number of personnel in the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF),” the report added.

However, Spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs has said that they have taken serious steps to fight illicit drugs and alcoholic beverages over the past one year.

According to SIGAR, poppy is still being cultivated and produced in volatile regions of Afghanistan.

Arezo News Website – Humayun Salimi