I read this article with great interest, as the unsuccessful US effort to suppress Afghan opium production was the subject of some of my earliest research.
Readers of this article might be interested in the Twitter thread below:
x.com/jeffreypclem...
x.com
Jeffrey P. Clemens on X: "An underrated mistake in US policy in Afghanistan was its long-running effort to suppress the cultivation of opium poppy and, in turn, the production of heroin and other opiates. A thread. 1/19" / X
An underrated mistake in US policy in Afghanistan was its long-running effort to suppress the cultivation of opium poppy and, in turn, the production of heroin and other opiates. A thread. 1/19
@washingtonpost.comExclusive: The CIA conducted a classified program to manipulate Afghanistan’s lucrative poppy crop, blanketing fields with modified seeds that germinated plants containing almost none of the chemicals that are refined into heroin, The Post learned.
wapo.st
Inside the CIA’s secret mission to sabotage Afghanistan’s opium
In a decade-long secret operation, the CIA modified poppy seeds and dropped them by the billions from aircraft over Afghanistan in an attempt to weaken the potency of the country’s opium crop.