Drug Trade Funding Terrorists

Ten years ago this week, President Bill Clinton signed off on the first $1.3 billion installment of Plan Colombia. A decade later, how is that working out? We ask the experts.

Up to a quarter of the Afghan poppy crop could be lost to a mysterious fungal disease especially afflicting Helmand and Kandahar provinces. Suspicious Afghan farmers are pointing fingers at the US and NATO.

What's an insurgent guerrilla movement to do when it needs funds to sustain its war? India's Naxalites are doing what so many have done before: Turning to the black market in illegal drugs and drug crops.

After nearly nine years of US and NATO military occupation, Afghanistan is now not only the world's largest opium producer, but also the world's largest cannabis producer, according to a new report from the UNODC.

US, NATO and Afghan military forces are consolidating their hold on the Taliban stronghold of Marja in Helmand province. But now is when the real battle for hearts and minds begins.

Afghan opium cultivation and production figures this year should be similar to 2009, the UN said in a report this week. That means that Afghanistan is still producing 40% more opium than is needed to supply all the world's junkies.

The State Department's "drugs and thugs" people in charge of Afghan counternarcotics policy aren't doing a very good job, an Inspector General's report has found. Of course, it's tough when you're tasked with Mission Impossible.

The Drug Policy Alliance's 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference got underway Thursday in Albuquerque, and it looks like the biggest yet. Here's an initial report from the conference opening. Look for much more next week, too.

The DEA suffered its first spilled blood in Afghanistan Monday when three of its agents were killed in a helicopter crash that also took the lives of seven US soldiers. The chopper was returning from a drug raid when it went down.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has issued a dire new report warning that the Afghan opium trade is spreading addiction, disease, and insurgency. Too bad it doesn't address the role of global drug prohibition in exacerbating all these problems.