By Crime and Justice News | December 16, 2019

In late 2017, U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan launched Operation Iron Tempest, a storm of airstrikes. The main target: a network of clandestine opium production labs that U.S. officials said was helping to generate $200 million a year in drug money for the Taliban. This is a new war, and the gloves are off, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Lance Bunch. That is our new strategy going forward, and its definitely been a game-changer and the Taliban is definitely feeling it. ... The war has changed. Within a year, Operation Iron Tempest fizzled out, the Washington Post reports. Many of the suspected labs turned out to be empty, mud-walled compounds. After 200 airstrikes, the U.S. military concluded it was a waste of resources to keep blowing up primitive targets with advanced aircraft and laser-guided munitions.

Of all the failures in Afghanistan, the war on drugs has been perhaps the most feckless, according to a cache of confidential government interviews and other documents. Since 2001, the U.S. has spent $9 billion on an array of programs to deter Afghanistan from supplying the world with heroin. Key players in the campaign acknowledged that none of the measures has worked and that, in many cases, they have made things worse. Mohammed Ehsan Zia, a former Afghan cabinet minister in charge of rural development programs, said the U.S. and other NATO countries never settled on an effective strategy and just threw money at the opium problem. He said they constantly changed policies and relied on consultants who were ignorant about Afghanistan. Afghanistan dominates global opium markets. Last year, it produced 82 percent of the worlds supply, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Defying U.S. efforts to curtail it, Afghan opium production has skyrocketed over the course of the 18-year war.

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US War on Afghanistan Heroin Failed, Made Things Worse - Crime Report